Born in London, England in 1950, of Polish parents. Studied photography at the London College of Printing until 1972. Always interested in his parents’ roots, he travelled to Poland in 1973 for what he thought were 3-6 months, and has lived there ever since.
Always a freelance, he became a Newsweek contract photographer in 1982 after working with them since 1978, covering Pope John Paul II’s first 2 pilgrimages to Poland in 1979 and 1983. In August 1980 he was the first foreign journalist, if not the first journalist, to arrive at the strike in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, covering the very beginning and then the last few days of the groundbreaking strike – after which he covered the birth of the “Solidarity” trade union until the end of 1981. In 1981/82 he covered the imposition of martial law in Poland, and the end of the “Solidarity” dream. Joining TIME magazine as a contract photographer from the beginning of 1985, he covered all that happened in Poland over the next few years, plus all the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and winning a prize at the World Press Photo Competition in 1986 for a portrait of Hungarian Communist leader Janos Kadar. As the only, and later one of the very few Western photojournalists to actually live in an East European country, he was in an ideal position to cover most of the amazing events of 1989, starting with Poland’s Roundtable Talks and first free elections that led to the end of Communism there, the fall of the Berlin Wall some months later, as well as the Velvet Revolution in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and later in Bulgaria and Romania.
For the last 10 years or so, he has worked on a personal project about mentally handicapped children, producing several exhibitions that have toured Poland and other countries.