“I’m a pilot and a photographer. Side Effects is a documentary photographic project about the complicated relationship between humans and nature. It was shot from a paraglider or a gyroplane some 150 m (500 feet) above the ground. I mainly focus on the area surrounding Gdynia, Poland, where I live.”

What interests me most – and what I explore in my work – is the answer to this question: What is the natural environment for humans? Is it an untouched, virgin landscape? Or is it a landscape that has been changed, adapted to human needs?My work offers a graphic and sometimes abstract portrait of how civilisation comes into being.

Side Effects consists of a photo book and an exhibition. In the book, the only captions I have chosen to give the photographs are the geographic coordinates of the place where the picture was made. For me, it is less important what the actual content of the photo is than the reactions, reflections, and ideas that arise when looking at it.

It is a bit as if the viewer is flying together with me and, just like me during the flight, has no information about what they are looking at. An admiration for the form comes before any understanding of the content. Everyone can bring ideas and meaning to these pictures. I’d like Side Effects to be a starting point for a discussion about what is good and bad, necessary and optional, in the relationship between humans and nature.