As a child, Kacper Kowalski loved watching seagulls glide over the roofs of buildings. One day, equipped with his passion for empty landscapes, a great deal of bravery, and an engine at his command, he became a seagull himself. But where most gulls “get from shore to food and back again and don’t bother to learn the essence of flying”, for Kowalski, just like for Richard Bach’s seagull Jonathan Livingston, “it was not eating that mattered, but flight”. For the author, the mystic experience of flying came before everything else. “This is how photography came into my life,” he explains. “It was the perfect excuse to jump on my gyrocopter and disappear over the horizon”. 

Event Horizon is the artist’s fourth book and gives us access to the most intimate parts of his soul, revealing his introspective approach to nature and the discovery of his vulnerability and feelings. “With the beginning of winter, I set out on a journey in search of harmony. Driven by instinct, I ventured farther and farther until I passed the boundaries of rationality,” Kowalski reveals. 

Event Horizon functions separately as well as complements his previous book, Arché. Both projects were created in similar locations and physical conditions. They are connected like yin and yang, and despite their similarity, they are very distinct at the meta-level. Kowalski approached Event Horizon with a different mindset and experienced deeper, more spiritual life experiences in the process of making the desired photographs in the frozen landscapes.

Event Horizon has been published by 1605 Collective. Initiative: Bastiaan Woudt, design: Janneke Schrey, curator: Wiktoria Michałkiewicz, foreword: Robert Macfarlane.