Dawid Zielinski

Hungarian border fence under construction.

Migrants' tents forming transient campsite on an empty field in southern Hungary.

Migrants resting on the pier in Kos town.

Children's clothes hang from a fence outside Idomeni train station, where thousands of migrants and refugees are stuck at a makeshift refugee camp following the closing of the Macedonian border.

A migrant on a ferry off the coast of Kos island, heading to Piraeus.

A Foreign Landscape

Wars, famine, poverty and climate change continue to drive people out from 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. Continously 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 inhabitated and organized long ago, even if it's just a 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.

In 2015 and 2016, I covered the refugee crisis as it was unfolding in various European countries. Gradually, I became increasingly interested in how their arrival was transforming the landscape. Serving initially as a backdrop for their story, it gradually started to tell its own tale, one of fear and despair but also hope and resilience, among new divisions and borders brought by rapidly deteriorating political climate.

Instead of following the routine of descriptive and news oriented work that we've seen again and again, I plan to focus on the dynamics of landscape transformations along established migration routes and the ephemeral traces of migrant presence.

With this approach, I want to explore the general idea of temporality and draw parallels between migrant's plight and the conditions of contemporary nomads as they echo the same story of constant movement in todays liquid global society.

Dawid Zieliński

Dawid Zieliński is a freelance documentary photographer based in Kraków, Poland, with a main focus on social and environmental issues.  His coverage of European refugee crisis was awarded highly acclaimed Grand Press Photo of the Year Award 2016 as well as Pictures of the Year International and NPPA's Best of Photojournalism awards in 2017. He's been working as a contributing photographer for Magazyn Kontakt since 2016.