I have always been intrigued by the Polish navy. As a child, I often traveled with my parents to the seaside and remember my fascination with the ominous shapes of the grey battleships as they sat on the horizon. I often heard sounds of faraway explosions. I knew that these were war games. My first ever complete sentence was said by the Baltic Sea and it was "look dad a ship is flowing by". After political transformation in 1989, the Polish navy underwent huge changes, it is now part of NATO. This personal project is an attempt to understand the work of Polish naval sailors on battleships during war games on the Baltic Sea.
Mikolaj Nowacki (b.1972, Poland) received his Master’s degree in International Law, pursuing a doctoral thesis that examined environmental aspects of International Space Law. He discontinued his doctorate to focus on documentary photography and worked eight years for major Polish newspapers. His work has been published in the Polish editions of National Geographic and Newsweek and also in The New York Times Lens Blog, CNN Photos, Le Monde, Neue Zürcher Zeitung and The Sunday Times Magazine among others. Mikolaj has won numerous awards and was a finalist in a number of Polish professional photography contests. He was also nominee in Prix Pictet, was a finalist in Sony World Photography Awards, achieved Special Mention in Winephoto International Photo Competition and in the NPPA Best of Photojournalism. In 2013 he finished his two year Mentor Program with VII Photo with Antonin Kratochvil followed by a solo exhibition “Odra” at the VII gallery in New York. His "Odra" was also exhibited in China during the Xishangbanna Photo Festival, Nowacki was awarded there with the Nomination for the Best Photographers. He is based in Wroclaw, Poland.