Dawid Zieliński is a freelance documentary photographer with main focus on social and humanitarian issues.
By acknowledging photography's inherent shortcomings he favors medium's complexity
and ambiguity, blurring the lines between photojournalism, documentary practice and art.
He works as an editorial photographer for clients including The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, among others.
In 2015, as a photojournalist for Magazyn Kontakt, he started covering European refugee
crisis, travelling to Turkey, Greece, Bosnia 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
resulting work, Foreign Landscape, was widely recognized (POYI, NPPA Best of
Photojournalism, Grand Press Photo, Krzysztof Miller Prize, CDS Documentary Prize) and
exhibited (Poland, Spain, France, Belgium, Romania and Israel).
In 2020 Dawid, borrowing from the tradition of American FSA photographers, travelled
extensively throughout Poland as a recipient of Polish Ministry of Culture Scholarship to
document social and economical consequences of COVID pandemic: from healthcare
system collapse and social exclusion to shortage of farm laborers to increasing information
noise.
Since 2020 Dawid has been a member of Archive of Public Protests, a Polish collective documenting protest culture in Poland. APP's photographers are motivated not only by “duty to archive” (Jacques Derrida) but also hoping to extend the life of their images 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, VOGUE Poland) 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 visual arts including Pictures
Of the Year International (POYI), NPPA Best of Photojournalism, International
Photography Awards (IPA), Polish Ministry of Culture Scholarship in Visual Arts and others. In 2021 Dawid's work was aquired by Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany.
He currently lives in Poland.
Awards and recognitions:
2025 - Polish Ministry of Culture Scholarship recipient
2021 - Paszporty Polityki - nominacja w kategorii Sztuki Wizualne / Polityka's Passports - nominee in Visual Arts category (with APP)
2021 - VIEWS Deutsche Bank Award 2021 (with APP)
2020 - Polish Ministry of Culture Scholarship recipient
2020 - Px3 Prix de la Photographie de Paris - State of the World - Shortlist
2020 - Px3 Prix de la Photographie de Paris - Press/Feature story - Honorable Mention
2020 - CDS Documentary Essay Prize - Finalist
2020 - TAI Photo Grant - Finalist
2019 - Krzysztof Miller Prize - Finalist
2019 - PhotOn Festival - #PHENAwardPhotonGrant
2018 - International Photography Awards - Deeper Perspective - Honorable Mention
2018 - Grand Press Photo - People singles - Finalist
2017 - Pictures Of the Year International (POYI) - Feature singles - Award of Excellence
2017 - NPPA Best of Photojournalism - International News Singles - 3rd place
2017 - DOC! Photo Debuts selection
2016 - Grand Press Photo - Photo Of The Year
2016 - Grand Press Photo - News singles - 1st place