Noorderlicht

Ordinary Pain

Simon Njami

main exhibition / 6 sep 4 oct 2009

Jodi Bieber

• LAS CANAS (Spain, 2008)

  In Spain needle sharing by drug users is one of the leading means of HIV and AIDS transmission. Without a social safety net, in addition to coping with their illness the infected addicts are also victims of social exclusion. As an African, Jodi Bieber was surprised that this practice is also to be found in the rich West. She steeped herself in their situation, made still worse by the poor quality of the drugs. Nevertheless, LAS CANAS is primarily about the addicts themselves: the sort of people from whom we avert our eyes on a daily basis, afraid as we are of recognising ourselves in our neighbours. Like Bieber's photographs, their stories are coloured by sadness, loss and loneliness. The users come from all over the world, but have one thing in common: drugs. It is their vulnerability to that one temptation that makes them different from us.

  

• LAS CANAS (Spain, 2008)

  

• LAS CANAS (Spain, 2008)

  

• LAS CANAS (Spain, 2008)

  

• LAS CANAS (Spain, 2008)

  

Marie Ange Bordas

• CO-MOVERE (Worldwide, 2009)

  For five years Marie Ange Bordas shared her life with people who had fled their war-torn homelands. She lived with them in refugee camps, ghettos and shelters, from Kenya to Sri Lanka, from Paris to Johannesburg. She sat with them at the breakfast table and shared life stories. She was touched by some, irritated by others, a few became friends, and one a lover. CO-MOVERE arose from the series of workshops and exhibitions that Bordas made in cooperation with the affected communities. The title is an interplay of the Latin commovere (to move emotionally), from co-movere (to move house together) and the English commotion: an uproar, a violent disruption of public order. These are all elements that recur in Bordas's work and that force us to reflection and discussion.

  

• CO-MOVERE (Worldwide, 2009)

  

• CO-MOVERE (Worldwide, 2009)

  

• CO-MOVERE (Worldwide, 2009)

  

Viviane Dalles

• MUSTANG, LAND AT THE END OF THE WORLD... (Nepal, 2009)

  High in the Himalayas lies Mustang, a community of about 9000 Nepalese of Tibetan origin. Protected by the natural boundaries of the mountains, for centuries the kingdom was left to itself. Even when the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1951, Mustang remained out of reach. In political terms, presently the region is part of Nepal and open to foreigners. But it is still a land without asphalt and autos – a country at the end of the world, frozen in time. In Mustang distances are measured in hours, not in kilometers. A specific, Buddhist way of life is passed on to new generations, who without this knowledge would find it difficult to survive in this unique but unforgiving landscape. As Dalles wrote in her diary: ‘The vastness of the landscape reminds me of how small we are, but at the same time it helps me realise that we can be as strong and powerful as the mountains by conquering them.’

  

• MUSTANG, LAND AT THE END OF THE WORLD... (Nepal, 2009)

  

• MUSTANG, LAND AT THE END OF THE WORLD... (Nepal, 2009)

  

• MUSTANG, LAND AT THE END OF THE WORLD... (Nepal, 2009)

  

David Damoison

• DOCKERS DE POINTE-NOIRE (Republic of the Congo, 2004)

  The most important port city in the Republic of the Congo is Pointe-Noire, where the harbour workers have to perform their tasks under difficult conditions and for very little pay. Loading and unloading the ships takes place with considerably less safety precautions and fewer streamlined processes than in Western ports. David Damoison recorded the men of Pointe-Noire in probing black and white portraits. Their gaze, the dust and dirt betray the severity of their lives, but also their pride.

  

• DOCKERS DE POINTE-NOIRE (Republic of the Congo, 2004)

  

• DOCKERS DE POINTE-NOIRE (Republic of the Congo, 2004)

  

• DOCKERS DE POINTE-NOIRE (Republic of the Congo, 2004)

  

• DOCKERS DE POINTE-NOIRE (Republic of the Congo, 2004)

  

Anabell Guerrero

• VOIX DU MONDE/DÉLOCALISATION (France, 2006-2007)

  Year in and year out the worldwide stream of migrants – legal and illegal – becomes greater. In 2006 Anabell Guerrero began her project VOIX DU MONDE/DÉLOCALISATION in the French city of Envry. More than fifty nationalities live alongside one another in Envry, an ever-changing combination of faces, cultures and traditions. On his long journey, Guerrero notes, the emigrant often takes along nothing but himself: his own eyes, his own hands, his own skin. Guerrero approaches the individual as a continent in himself – a place with a history. By photographing details of the body and sometimes combining them with geographic allusions, she creates a new geography that opens a door to an inner world. In this way she approaches the issue of immigration not as a sociologist or journalist, but attempts to be ‘an archivist of the unseen’.

  

• VOIX DU MONDE/DÉLOCALISATION (France, 2006-2007)

  

• VOIX DU MONDE/DÉLOCALISATION (France, 2006-2007)

  

• VOIX DU MONDE/DÉLOCALISATION (France, 2006-2007)

  

Laurence Leblanc

• RITHY, CHÉA, KIM SOUR ET LES AUTRES (Cambodia, 2000-2001)

  What do you do with memories that could best be forgotten? And how can you understand a country that is built on the remnants of an unspeakable bloodbath? Laurence Leblanc went to Cambodia, with the question of how children live with the horrors of the Killing Fields, traces of which are still present everywhere, however great an effort is made to erase them. She photographed the children, in black and white, and out of focus – as a dream world that touches on themes like childhood innocence, time and memory. Faces are as good as absent in Leblanc's work. The style is spiritual, almost transparent. ‘This was the best way to express what I felt’, she says of her approach. RITHY, CHÉA, KIM SOUR ET LES AUTRES shows how deep a bond Leblanc feels with Cambodia and with the children.

  

• RITHY, CHÉA, KIM SOUR ET LES AUTRES (Cambodia, 2000-2001)

  

• RITHY, CHÉA, KIM SOUR ET LES AUTRES (Cambodia, 2000-2001)

  

• RITHY, CHÉA, KIM SOUR ET LES AUTRES (Cambodia, 2000-2001)

  

Mwanzo Lawrence Millinga

• YOUNG MINERS (Tanzania, 2004)

  The popular gemstone Tanzanite, purple-blue in colour, is the most important source of income for many Tanzania villages. Mwanzo Lawrence Millinga went to Mererani, where life revolves around mining. The industry attracts people from all over the country, particularly adolescents, often not older than eighteen. Millinga photographed the mineworkers, including the nyoka, or 'snake boys'. Nyoka are able to move quickly through tunnels and passages that are difficult for older workers to negotiate. They bring food and tools, and search for new veins at a depth of hundreds of meters. It is dangerous work and often the boys do not leave the mine alive.

  

• YOUNG MINERS (Tanzania, 2004)

  

• YOUNG MINERS (Tanzania, 2004)

  

• YOUNG MINERS (Tanzania, 2004)

  

• YOUNG MINERS (Tanzania, 2004)

  

Aïda Muluneh

• ETHIOPIA: PAST/FORWARD (Ethiopia, 2008)

  After Ethiopia was in the spotlight during the famine of the mid-1980s, the country has largely disappeared from the world stage, despite the fact that this region in the Horn of Africa, with its rich history, has both great problems and great potential. In ETHIOPIA: PAST/FORWARD the young photographer Aïda Muluneh shows us diverse aspects of the land where she was born, from daily life as it plays out along the side of the road to the role of religion. People of various faiths – including Coptic Christians and Muslims – live peaceably alongside one another in Ethiopia. That is the good news from a country where repression and poverty seriously restrict the opportunities for the population.

  

• ETHIOPIA: PAST/FORWARD (Ethiopia, 2008)

  

• ETHIOPIA: PAST/FORWARD (Ethiopia, 2008)

  

• ETHIOPIA: PAST/FORWARD (Ethiopia, 2008)

  

• ETHIOPIA: PAST/FORWARD (Ethiopia, 2008)

  

Andrew Tshanbangu

• EMAKHAYA (South Africa, 2000-2004)

  ‘A home away from home’, is what Emakhaya means in Zulu. It is a word that refers to the many migrants who leave the countryside to work in the cities, who only return to their families and loved ones during holidays. Andrew Tshabangu went in the opposite direction. In order to get to know what life in a rural community was like, together with a migrant from Soweto he left the city to visit the man's village, Venda. Tshabangu discovered that the rural areas have many problems, including the absence of the breadwinners, underdeveloped infrastructure, poverty and the loss of agrarian traditions. ‘But despite everything, the people from Emakhaya were the most warm-hearted folk that I have ever met.’

  

• EMAKHAYA (South Africa, 2000-2004)

  

• EMAKHAYA (South Africa, 2000-2004)

  

• EMAKHAYA (South Africa, 2000-2004)