Dawid Zieliński is a freelance photographer, currently based in Poland. He documents social and environmental issues, blurring the lines between photojournalism, documentary practice and art. He works as an editorial photographer for international clients including Le Monde, Internazionale, Die Zeit, Le Temps, Gazeta Wyborcza and Tygodnik Powszechny. In 2015, as a photojournalist for Magazyn Kontakt, he began covering the European refugee crisis, travelling to Turkey, The Balkans and Hungary numerous times. He then gradually shifted his interest from news-related reporting to documenting long-term impact of migration, with a particular concern for shifting sociopolitical dynamics. The ongoing work, known as Foreign Landscape, was widely recognized by POYI, NPPA Best of Photojournalism, Grand Press Photo, Krzysztof Miller Prize, CDS Documentary Prize, and exhibited in Poland, Spain, France, Belgium, Romania and Israel. Since 2020 Dawid has been a member of Archive of Public Protests, a Polish collective founded by Rafał Milach (Magnum Photos), documenting protest culture in Poland. APP's photographers are motivated not only by “duty to archive” (Jacques Derrida) but also extending life of their images by making them accessible to researchers, artists and activists and thus bridging worlds of traditional photojournalism with those of art, academia and social activism. APP's collaborative work has been widely published (British Journal of Photography, Le Monde, Die Zeit, GUP Magazine) and exhibited (Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan, Peckham 24 Photo Festival in London, BOAN 1942 ARTSPACE in Seoul). Dawid has won several awards in both photojournalism and arts including Pictures Of the Year International, NPPA Best of Photojournalism, International Photography Awards (IPA), Polish Ministry of Culture Scholarship in Visual Arts, Deutsche Bank VIEWS Award 2021, 2021 Polityka Passports

Foreign Landscape

Refugees arriving to Europe are sidelined from day one, forced to nonexistence on the edges of the First World, facing razor wires and hostile attitudes. Contemporary nomads with no sense of arrival, their fate echoes the age-old story of constant movement in today's liquid global society. Wars, famine, poverty and climate change continue to drive people out of their homes, communities, countries, to the unknown. They join millions who are already on the move, constantly, restlessly, occupying spaces on the margins of the first world. Continuously interacting with their surroundings and the landscape they encounter along the way, they leave their mark, however elusive. From subtle signs in the forest undergrowths to discarded blankets to makeshift food stalls. This new and unexpected human presence is transforming the environment inhabited and organised long ago, even if it's just for a day, a week or a month, as they keep moving through the landscape scarred by walls and fences, running, hiding and then running again. Instead of following the routine of descriptive and news oriented work that we've seen again and again, this issue deserves a more comprehensive approach. From the dynamics of landscape transformation along established migration routes and traces of migrants presence, to immigration enforcement and structures of control, to information and disinformation, illusions of threat and propaganda spread by local and state authorities or various groups of interest. From men, women and children locked in refugee camps and other temporary facilities to those braving cold winters and hostile attitudes outside organised humanitarian assistance. They will continue to come. It's just a matter of time. With shrinking arable farmland, desertification and depleted fisheries, climate change and new conflicts, millions of refugees will arrive in Europe in decades to come, irreversibly transforming the social landscape of the continent.