I remember that flight. It started just like a hundred others. It was early in 2016. Fresh snow had fallen and the world looked like a Breughel painting. I wanted to take new pictures for the Side Effects series. I took off from my backyard. The air was calm and quiet. On the horizon, the sun was peeking from behind the clouds. I turned towards the beach. I knew what I was going to see: families feeding swans, the pier wrecked by storm and the industrial port teeming with life. I got it all in my archives. Human behavior, even when fascinating, becomes predictable after 20 years of bird’s eye observations.

“What am I doing here?”

I don’t know where the question came from. It popped up out of nowhere. I remember the moment vividly. I was flying 150 meters above the ground, the combustion engine was whirring on my back and the wing of the paraglider stretched above me. A red light flashed in my head: something went wrong! This type of question would not penetrate my defense system. Throughout the years, I have mastered excuses and retorts to any question undermining my method. “If I don’t go, the world will never learn about this or that view. I must go! It is my mission, my job, my passion and duty. Moreover, I am good at it, as my books, exhibitions and awards continue to confirm. This is how I earn a living and support my family”. The argument in my head continued, but the question kept returning: “What am I doing here?”.

“This isn’t your day. Descend right now! It is the only way to save yourself”.

I can’t let unwanted thoughts break down my operating system like a virus. My modus operandi is simple: taking off, photographing, landing, downloading pictures, planning future flights. No questions, no doubts, no emotions: just the image. Who cares about the feelings of a TV camera operator? I was a human drone, providing images for the press or the ads, invisible to the viewer. I hid behind my camera - from the world and from myself. What for?

I should have followed the procedure and landed or at least flown to the beach, towards life and light. But I flew in the opposite direction, straight into clouds and falling snow. I wanted to be alone and reflect on what I was doing and what lied ahead. Is this what machine revolt looks like?

I noticed I can disappear in the clouds. Infinite whiteness closed around me. I felt that a void was pulling me in and I didn’t resist. Lashed by the wind and the cold, on my paraglider covered with frost, I rushed into this void like a moth to the flame. Having landed, I packed my gear into the car and started chasing the weather front with its clouds and snow that came and went. I flew where a satellite couldn’t peek, where a drone would not make it and where other pilots wouldn’t want to venture. With each take-off, I tried to fly off the map, beyond what was known to me and away from people so as not to disturb them with my whirring engine.

I’m looking at the surface of the Earth and see no signs of life. I’m searching for evidence and traces. I can feel a presence and I’m trying to embrace it. I’m focusing on what I feel rather than see. I catch up with the unknown and I start taking pictures - this time only for myself. This is how I opened up to emotions. They were always there, but I concealed them for years so they wouldn’t stand in the way of my work. Mania, obsession, fear – what I experienced up in the air was indescribable. How could I convey my feelings in a situation when the paraglider folds and I start falling into an abyss? Or when I have to fly somewhere just as the wind changes direction and I don’t know if I’ll be able to return to base. I promised myself once that I would tell someone about what happened up in the air, but there was nobody around when I landed. And after I packed my gear, I forgot to make that phone call. What could I say anyway? The emotions vanished into thin air.

Fresh snow covers the traces of human presence. It conceals flaws, shortcomings, evidence of life. Its surface reminds me of drawings I made when I attempted to be an architect. Even though I gave up my life over a drawing board, I was still fascinated by black-and-white diagrams containing information about three-dimensional space, linking the past with visions of the future, illustrating function and habit, organizing movement and life. When I worked on a project, it was up to me to choose how to draw a forest or a space altered by human interference. During my winter flight I discovered a ready map, a complex message. Landscape is a medium; I attempted to decipher and pass on its message. Back then I didn’t know who the addressee was. I planned to think about it in spring, after landing for good.

When spring came, I looked at the photos. “Are these mine? Where is everybody? Why is the world so deserted? Is there going to be happy ending?”

OVER is a personal project on what it means to spend 20 years with your head in the clouds and how it feels to return to the ground. It’s a story about emotions told through aerial photography, available in the form of an exhibition and a book. The sequence of photographs in the book mirrors the sequence of flights or accompanying emotions.

The OVER photobook is available here

Event Horison

• January - March 2016: The flights and shoots. I'm in the trance. 
• Spring 2016: Where are everybody? Why I saw Earth abandoned?
Why I did such a project? Starting to ask questions to myself.

• Summer 2016: I'm working with curators, gallerist, critics, friends. Asking and wondering.
• August 2016: I'm going for portfolio review at Landskrona Photofestival with more and
more questions. I won the review. The prize - the obligation is to show the result during
the next year festival edition on the solo exhibition. 

• November 2016: 'Fade To White' exhibition in New York City with a few prints from OVER.
• November 2016: New York Times, Lens Blog article about the incoming project.
• December 2016 - August 2017: Working on the book with Ania Nałęcka-Milach;
• September 2017: First solo exhibition of OVER during the Landskrona Photofestival.
• November 2017: Book World Premiere & opening in Vienna & opening in Paris...

Publications:

• GUP Magazine project review
• ASX - review by Brad Feuerhelm
• Float Magazine review by Tim Hodge
• F-Stop Magazine review by Cary Benbow
• L'ŒIL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE
• Duży Format | Gazeta Wyborcza Ada Petriczko
• New York Times | Lens Blog by Rena Silverman
• L'ŒIL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE
• GUP magazine book review by Erik Vroons
• Elizabeth Avedon Journal review
• Przekrój review by Joanna Kinowska
• Feature Shoot Ellyn Kail
• Fast Company Adele Peters
• Elizabeth Avedon Journal review
• L'ŒIL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE After Landskrona Festival
• Digitam Camera review by Joanna Kinowska
• Architectural Digest by STEFANIE WALDEK about Fade To White exhibition

Selected exhibitions: 

• OVER | Haute Photographie  | ATLAS GALLERY | Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam | 2019.02
• Side Effects & OVER | Galerie XII | Los Angeles | USA | 2018.12
• OVER | Paris Photo | ATLAS GALLERY | Paris, France | 2018.11
• KUNST 18 ZÜRICH | International Contemporary Art Fair Zurich | Zurich, Swiss | 2018.10
• 44 under 4K | ATLAS GALLERY | London, England | 2018 
• Hare&Hounds | W Ramach Sopotu Festival | PGS - National Gallery of ART | Sopot, Poland | 2018 
• High:  Photography from above | ATLAS GALLERY | London, England | 2018
• OVER at Photobook Exhibition | Athens Photo Festival • Benaki Museum | Athens, Greece | 2018
• photobook OVER | NOUA travelling photobook library festival | Norway | 2018
• OVER  | Anzenberger Gallery | Vienna,  Austria | 2017 
• OVER & Side Effects | Photo12 Gallery | Paris, France | 2017 
• OVER | Landskrona Fotofestival | Landskrona, Sweden | 2017 

Awards & Honourable Mentions:

• Independent Publisher Book Awards | GOLD: photobook OVER | nonfiction, Europe | 2018
• MIFA 2018 | GOLD: photobook OVER | Fine Arts | 2018
• Fotograficzna Publikacja Roku | HONOURABLE MENTION: Photobook OVER |  2018
• PX3 - Prix de la Photographie, Paris | Silver: photobook OVER | Books, Nature | 2018
• PX3 - Prix de la Photographie, Paris | Silver: OVER | Nature, Earth | 2018
• GRAND PRESS PHOTO 2018 | Nomination to the book of the year, OVER |2018
• Int. Photography Awards IPA | Honorable Mention: photobook OVER | Self Published | 2018
• 2018 Daylight Photo Award | Juror’s picks: OVER | Sarah Leen (NG, Washington, DC) | 2018
• Singapore Photo Festival 2018 | finalist: photobook OVER | 2018
• FOLA® PHOTOBOOK AWARD | Shortlisted: książka OVER | 2018
• Kolga Award | Shortlisted: OVER | 2018