How do we come to know someone we’ve never met?

This work investigates how Polish immigrants have been seen, spoken about, and visually imagined in the British press, and how those mediated images shape both public perception and personal identity. Drawing from lived experience and research, he traces how individuals are transformed into symbols through language, headlines, and glances. The work becomes a reflection not only on representation, but on the act of perceiving itself.

Combining photography, text, and a methodology rooted in postcolonial theory, the project questions the representation of immigrants in British newspapers, tracing how headlines and stereotypes form a portrait of “the other.” At its heart lies a paradox: while the press speaks of immigrants, it rarely listens to them. These images - intimate, still, direct - aim to return voice and visibility to individuals too often reduced to labels.

Captions drawn from interviews and questionnaires reflect broader public perceptions of Polish immigrants, placing the viewer face-to-face with the kinds of language used to describe a generalised “other.”