Noorderlicht

Multivocal Histories

Bas Vroege

main exhibition / 6 sep 4 oct 2009

Taco Hidde Bakker

• GROZNY MEMORIES (Russia, 2009)

  The Chechen capital Grozny once was known as the greenest city in the Soviet Union. Today Grozny is synonymous with war, destruction and gloom. Taco Hidde Bakker came to know the old Grozny from stories and photographs from Chechen refugees whose portraits he shot in The Netherlands. Moreover, on the internet he was able to acquire reproductions of picture post cards of the intact city of yore. When blown up greatly, the pixelated photos become a metaphor for memory and devastation. Bakker combined them with the refugees' recollections of the war which he had previously written up. The contrast creates a feeling of discomfort and calls up questions about the influences which go into the mental pictures we develop.

  

• GROZNY MEMORIES (Russia, 2009)

  

• GROZNY MEMORIES (Russia, 2009)

  

• GROZNY MEMORIES (Russia, 2009)

  

• GROZNY MEMORIES (Russia, 2009)

  

Wouter den Bakker

• HIPSTER INTIFADA (Worldwide, 2009)

  Like the portrait of Che Guevara, the keffiya (the 'Palestinian scarf') can be a conscious political statement, but it can also be a fashion accessory with little or no thought behind it. When Wouter den Bakker wore a keffiya as a teenager, he did not take the possible reactions of Jewish classmates into account. Is the symbol still that charged? Den Bakker began photographing keffiya wearers in 2007, followed discussions on the internet, and also began to collect visual materials that were available there. It became clear to him that the meaning of the keffiya rests primarily on suggestion. He decided to strip the photographs out of their context and show them alongside one another – whether they were of Fatah supporters or Hollywood stars, professional footballers or fashionistas. 'It is not the chameleon-like keffiya itself,' he concludes, 'but the visual language used that determines what statement is being made.'

  

Vojta Dukát

• FAREWELL TO ARMS (Czechoslovakia, 1991/2009)

  When the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Czechoslovakia began in 1991, it was immediately clear to Vojta Dukát that the event was of historic importance. He decided to record the human interest aspects of the withdrawal with his camcorder. These private shots – unique historical images – lay under Dukát's bed for 18 years. At the end of 2008 Dukát began to digitise the video tapes, which had still not been viewed (save for a couple minutes worth) by anyone, including Dukát. That is how the interesting material surfaced. In 2009 Dukát made a selection with Ales Vasicek, which became the spearhead of the FAREWELL TO ARMS project. It not only shows the withdrawal, but is also an attempt to link names to the anonymous faces of the soldiers, and to discover how they have fared since 1991. To this end the public are invited to share stories, images and information. Images from then are the motor for writing a new history now.

  

Julian Germain

• STEELWORKS (Great Britain, 1990)

  For almost a century-and-a-half Consett, in County Durham, England, was a centre for iron and steel production. That is, until the factories closed their doors in 1980. These were the early days of Thatcherism, a period when massive cuts were being made in Britain's old industries, without the least concern for the social consequences. In his book Steelworks Julian Germain recorded the collapse of Consett. To do this he combined his own work with that of a local news photographer, Tommy Harris, and family snapshots and journalistic reports. Unintentionally, this approach put Germain in the vanguard of a new movement in documentary photography. Germain contrasted the naive optimism of the past with the loss that speaks from his own colour photographs and the news reporting of the day, creating a harrowing picture of a devastated community.

  

• STEELWORKS (Great Britain, 1990)

  

• STEELWORKS (Great Britain, 1990)

  

• STEELWORKS (Great Britain, 1990)

  

• STEELWORKS (Great Britain, 1990)

  

Tim Hetherington

• SLEEPING SOLDIERS (Afghanistan, 2009)

  As part of a long-running project the British photographer Tim Hetherington followed an American platoon in a remote valley in Afghanistan. While he was with them he built up a more intimate bond with the soldiers than most journalists are privileged to. From this unique position, and making use of both photography and moving images, together with editor Magali Charrier Hetherington created an installation that makes the confusion and stress of war, but also the comradeship among soldiers palpable. By arranging documentary material according to the aesthetic of fiction Hetherington has been able to convincingly evoke the stress of war for the viewer.

  

• SLEEPING SOLDIERS (Afghanistan, 2009)

  

• SLEEPING SOLDIERS (Afghanistan, 2009)

  

• SLEEPING SOLDIERS (Afghanistan, 2009)

  

Jiang Jian

• ARCHIVES OF ORPHANS (China, 2005)

  The Chinese photographer Jiang Jian describes his series ARCHIVES OF ORPHANS as an important turning point in his life and work: during the process he became aware of a new relation between art and life. ARCHIVES OF ORPHANS is a report on a campaign to support more than a thousand indigent child orphans. The children receive help from a philanthropic federation in the province of Henan and a Shaolin Temple located there until they become adults. Jiang Jian wants to document the changes in the lives of the children every five years, making use of diverse photographic methods.

  

• ARCHIVES OF ORPHANS (China, 2005)

  

• ARCHIVES OF ORPHANS (China, 2005)

  

Anastasia Khoroshilova

• OUT OF CONTEXT (Germany, 2005)

  Who had heard of Beslan before the Chechen freedom fighters' hostage-taking in a school in this Russian city resulted in a bloodbath? Since then Beslan is a byword for terrorism and ill-considered government intervention. A year after the events Anastasia Khoroshilova encountered a number of the survivors in Bad-Tölz, in Germany, where they were undergoing medical-psychological treatment. She decided to photograph the children outside the context within we know them, in vacation clothes, against the background of the Bavarian landscape. She combined her photographs with images from the portrait gallery the citizens of Beslan have made as a memorial to the victims. In this way the inner scars left behind by one of the blackest pages in Russian history become visible.

  

• OUT OF CONTEXT (Germany, 2005)

  

• OUT OF CONTEXT (Germany, 2005)

  

• OUT OF CONTEXT (Germany, 2005)

  

• OUT OF CONTEXT (Germany, 2005)

  

Susan Meiselas

• REFRAMING HISTORY (Nicaragua, 2004)

  1978 was a turning point in the history of Nicaragua. The tense political situation in the Central American country unravelled into a civil war which meant the end for the Somoza dictatorship. Susan Meiselas reported on the conflict, resulting in the legendary photo book Nicaragua: June 1978 to July 1979. Since then she has returned a number of times. In 1991 she went back, together with her partner Richard P. Rogers and filmmaker Alfred Guzzetti, in order to interview people photographed at that time. For the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the revolution she showed 19 of these photographs realised as billboards in public space. Together with Guzzetti they recorded the reactions on video. Thus REFRAMING HISTORY is a history written at three moments. It invites those involved to reflect, and builds bridges between generations. History is no closed book, Meiselas argues, but demands remembering and revision.

  

• REFRAMING HISTORY (Nicaragua, 2004)

  

• REFRAMING HISTORY (Nicaragua, 2004)

  

• REFRAMING HISTORY (Nicaragua, 2004)

  

• REFRAMING HISTORY (Nicaragua, 2004)

  

Florian Schwarz

• WOHINUNDZURÜCK (Russia, 2007)

  Who was Leo Dunz? That question was forced on Florian Schwarz when he found an old photograph of his grandfather up in the attic. Dunz served in the Wehrmacht during World War II, and until 1947 was held prisoner in the Siberian city of Asbest, a past of which he never spoke. Sixty-five years later Schwarz – armed with a camera rather than a rifle – travelled through Russia in an attempt to reconstruct this blank page in the family history. The resulting visual document was more than a journey back through time in family and world history. It became a journey through contemporary Russia, a road movie about a monotonous and unvarying décor, where silence and time are one's foremost fellow travellers.

  

• WOHINUNDZURÜCK (Russia, 2007)

  

• WOHINUNDZURÜCK (Russia, 2007)

  

• WOHINUNDZURÜCK (Russia, 2007)

  

Andrea Stultiens

• THE KADDU WASSWA ARCHIVE (Uganda, 2008-2010)

  You stumble across the best stories by accident. In 2008 Andrea Stultiens was in Uganda, where she met Kaddu Wasswa, an old man who had recorded the sometimes dramatic course of his life in an extensive archive of photographs, texts and documents. Kaddu had grown up under the British colonial administration and lived through the years of Idi Amin's reign of terror. Ten of his 18 children had died of AIDS. He had worked as a geologist, bookseller, shopkeeper, novelist, theatre maker, inventor and human rights activist – among other things. In collaboration with Kaddu and his grandson Stultiens is using the archive to unravel the story of a man and his country.
  

  

• THE KADDU WASSWA ARCHIVE (Uganda, 2008-2010)

  

• THE KADDU WASSWA ARCHIVE (Uganda, 2008-2010)

  

• THE KADDU WASSWA ARCHIVE (Uganda, 2008-2010)

  

Ales Vasicek

• FAREWELL TO ARMS (Czechoslovakia, 1991/2009)

  

• FAREWELL TO ARMS (Czechoslovakia, 1991/2009)