Noorderlicht

photographers 'Metropolis '

• 

  Abir Abdullah

  • DEATH TRAPS: TALES OF A MEGA COMMUNITY (Bangladesh, 2005-2011)

    In the chaotic city of Dhaka, home to millions, the absence of building regulations and fire prevention measures leads to highly dangerous situations. Fires are a regular occurrence, and are difficult to bring under control because of the lack of the right apparatus and training. As a result, homes, possessions, and lives are lost. In his series DEATH TRAPS Abir Abdullah shows that although fire is a problem for everyone, it is particularly in the slums where they do the greatest damage. The poorest have no reserves in the bank, while they often lose all that they have in fires. With his work Abdullah hopes to awaken both the public and the authorities to the problem.

  • DEATH TRAPS: TALES OF A MEGA COMMUNITY (Bangladesh, 2005-2011)

  • DEATH TRAPS: TALES OF A MEGA COMMUNITY (Bangladesh, 2005-2011)

  • DEATH TRAPS: TALES OF A MEGA COMMUNITY (Bangladesh, 2005-2011)

  • DEATH TRAPS: TALES OF A MEGA COMMUNITY (Bangladesh, 2005-2011)

• 

  Evan Abramson

  • ORPHAN NATION (Haiti, 2010)

    Despite the presence of a myriad of relief agencies in Haiti and billions of dollars in aid, six months after the devastating earthquake of 12 January, 2010, only 10% of the rubble had been cleared away. Evan Abramson asks whether the the voice of the Haitians was in fact being heard. “It is a land that appears to be suspended between destruction and recovery, between progress, revolt and normality,” he says. His nocturnal portraits of the orphaned children of Port-au-Prince, combined with images of the destruction, summon up a insistent image of a people who have been left in the lurch.

  • ORPHAN NATION (Haiti, 2010)

  • ORPHAN NATION (Haiti, 2010)

• 

  Martin Adolfsson

  • SUBURBIA GONE WILD (2006-2011)

    A number of countries that didn't yet have a middle class twenty years ago have rapidly grown into economic and industrial powerhouses. Martin Adolfsson photographed the model dwellings that are rising in suburbs as advertisements for a ready-made lifestyle sale. They are to be found in in up-and-coming countries like Brazil, China and Mexico, but by removing the tell-tale geographic clues Adolfsson underscores their uniformity. The rise of suburbia, as he lets us see, is a worldwide phenomenon.

  • SUBURBIA GONE WILD (2006-2011)

  • SUBURBIA GONE WILD (2006-2011)

  • SUBURBIA GONE WILD (2006-2011)

  • SUBURBIA GONE WILD (2006-2011)

• 

  Manal Al Dowayan

  • AND WE HAD NO SHARED DREAMS (Saudi Arabia, 2010)

    Manal Al Dowayan investigates the sense of estrangement and loneliness which can seize one in urban public spaces. She does that by using the urban landscape, recorded in black and white, in large format, as a canvas for graphic techniques that refer to street art. With the elements that she adds to the image she enters into a dialogue with the city, and tells unspoken stories of regret, hope and desire.

  • AND WE HAD NO SHARED DREAMS (Saudi Arabia, 2010)

• 

  Anas Al-Shaikh

  • DEATH OF LANDSCAPE (Bahrain, 2007)

    In a small space like that of the island nation of Bahrain, frenetic construction has a great effect on the environment. The natural space, both horizontal and vertical, is drastically reduced. Reminders of a history full of individuals and communities of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds are erased by advancing modernity. Despite utopian promises, the new history is not being made by and for the people, but tailored to the needs of authorities who have little feeling for the desires of the people. In the meantime, says Anas Al-Shaikh, everyone must adapt psychologically to the daily visual shocks of the new geography.

  • DEATH OF LANDSCAPE (Bahrain, 2007)

  • DEATH OF LANDSCAPE (Bahrain, 2007)

  • DEATH OF LANDSCAPE (Bahrain, 2007)

  • DEATH OF LANDSCAPE (Bahrain, 2007)

• 

  Mehraneh Atashi

  • TEHRAN’S SELF-PORTRAIT (Iran, 2008-2010)

    Where the textures of the city seep through into her self-portraits in the series TEHRAN’S SELF-PORTRAIT, the young Iranian photographer Mehraneh Atashi literally becomes one with her city. The series is the outcome of what she describes as a struggle. “The street pushed me away with one hand and embraced me with the other.” Between 2008 and 2010 Atashi approached Tehran from every angle. Under the surface, the tensions of modern Iran are palpable. The squares and streets were places where young people rose up in revolt, were beaten down and arrested. “We were intimate like that, the city and I.”

  • TEHRAN’S SELF-PORTRAIT (Iran, 2008-2010)

  • TEHRAN’S SELF-PORTRAIT (Iran, 2008-2010)

  • TEHRAN’S SELF-PORTRAIT (Iran, 2008-2010)

• 

  Giorgio Barrera

  • THROUGH THE WINDOW (2002-2008)

    There can be a story behind every window, Giorgio Barrera says. Even the most commonplace pictures of an ordinary house, completely unveiled to the eye, give us the feeling that we are still not seeing everything. Barrera photographed the windows, but in the last analysis we – the viewers – are the voyeurs, as if we were there, without the intervention of the photographer. Moreover, from our safe and privileged position we can look longer and more intently than we would dare to do standing before actual windows. We can identify with the situation that can be seen through the window; we can satisfy our curiosity and become disoriented.

  • THROUGH THE WINDOW (2002-2008)

  • THROUGH THE WINDOW (2002-2008)

  • THROUGH THE WINDOW (2002-2008)

• 

  Matteo Bastianelli

  • THE BOSNIAN IDENTITY (Bosnia, 2009-2011)

    The Bosnian capital Sarajevo is a city of contrasts. It is scarred by conflict, but is also the backdrop for modernistic new buildings and skyscrapers. The rush of its daily traffic would seem to belie the still fresh memories of the dark days in which people hardly dared to go out on the street for fear of snipers and bombs. In this city in motion, which at the same time has something unchanging and everlasting about it, individuals seek an identity: they, like their city itself, are engaged in assuming a new identity.

  • THE BOSNIAN IDENTITY (Bosnia, 2009-2011)

  • THE BOSNIAN IDENTITY (Bosnia, 2009-2011)

  • THE BOSNIAN IDENTITY (Bosnia, 2009-2011)

  • THE BOSNIAN IDENTITY (Bosnia, 2009-2011)

• 

  Nina Berman

  • GREENING THE GHETTO (United States, 2010)

    Once the South Bronx, in New York City, was America's most notorious slum – a background of run-down tenements and dirty streets for its gangbangers and street corner hiphoppers. But bit by bit this post-apocalyptic décor has disappeared. Its residents have literally planted the seeds of progress. More than a hundred comunity gardens now thrive in unexpected locations. The South Bronx has become part of the vanguard of the Urban Farming movement, which can make a significant difference for the environment and for the social climate in urban areas.

  • GREENING THE GHETTO (United States, 2010)

  • GREENING THE GHETTO (United States, 2010)

  • GREENING THE GHETTO (United States, 2010)

  • GREENING THE GHETTO (United States, 2010)

• 

  Peter Bialobrzeski

  • THE RAW AND THE COOKED (Asia, 2011)

    In THE RAW AND THE COOKED Peter Bialobrzeski turns his camera on the whole spectrum of architecture that accompanies the development of Asia's mega-cities, from the simplest self-built shelters – in human scale and made from scavenged materials – to the futuristic, planned cities of glass, steel and concrete. Underlying the whole project are the question marks he places alongside the ‘progress’ which has led to the new mercilessly wiping away the old, and the massive waste of resources.

  • THE RAW AND THE COOKED (Asia, 2011)

  • THE RAW AND THE COOKED (Asia, 2011)

  • THE RAW AND THE COOKED (Asia, 2011)

• 

  Jodi Bieber

  • SOWETO (South Africa, 2010)

    Anyone hearing the name of Soweto immediately thinks of poverty, dust, crime and AIDS. This is the image that is constantly stoked by the media. Jodi Bieber wanted to show Soweto as it is today – a place where people have homes, where they do their shopping and go about their everyday tasks. She wanted to undermine the stereotypes and reveal the cosmopolitan townships as their residents themselves experience them.

  • SOWETO (South Africa, 2010)

  • SOWETO (South Africa, 2010)

  • SOWETO (South Africa, 2010)

  • SOWETO (South Africa, 2010)

• 

  Julio Bittencourt

  • CITIZEN X (Brazil, 2008-2009)

    Since the early 1990s the urban counterparts of the famous Brazilian MST – a movement that demands land rights for small farmers – have been arguing for adequate living space for the homeless. Thirteen thousand families in Sao Paulo, mostly poor migrants, are by now represented by a dozen organisations. Although the government has taken superficial measures to improve the quality of life in the city – for instance by taking up the cudgels against visual pollution from advertisements – the real problems are not being addressed. We see the consequences in Prestes Maia, the largest squatters' bulwark in the world (now cleared by the authorities), where over 1600 people sought to build a dignified life for themselves in the midst of the decay.

  • IN A WINDOW OF PRESTES MAIA 911 BUILDING (Brazil, 2008)

• 

  Kendrick Brinson

  • SUN CITY: LIFE AFTER LIFE (United States, 2009-2010)

    When it opened in 1960, Sun City in Arizona was the first community especially for pensionados, and is still the largest: a senior citizens' paradise that covers more than 36 square kilometres, with palm trees along the streets, and dedicated lanes for golf carts. Sun City has eleven golf courses, seven recreation centres, seven swimming pools, three country clubs, sixteen shopping centres and two libraries. Surrounded by these amenities, its 42,500 residents, averaging 73 years of age, sit out their twilight years. Sun City is unique, says the photographer Kendrick Brinson, but with the elderly growing in numbers, the demand for similar cities can only grow too.

  • SUN CITY: LIFE AFTER LIFE (United States, 2009-2010)

  • SUN CITY: LIFE AFTER LIFE (United States, 2009-2010)

  • SUN CITY: LIFE AFTER LIFE (United States, 2009-2010)

  • SUN CITY: LIFE AFTER LIFE (United States, 2009-2010)

• 

  Giacomo Brunelli

  • THE ANIMALS (2005-ongoing)

    Giacomo Brunelli describes his long-running project in which he photographs animals in all kinds of surroundings as 'street photography focusing on animals'.. His photographs reveal how thoroughly animals are integrated into our man-made environment. But what particularly interests the photographer is the interaction between the animal and himself. “When I want to record an animal, I will first ignore it and then pursue it, to see how it will respond. Sometimes I just stare and see what happens. Reactions differ: sometimes the animals are curious, sometimes frightened.”

  • THE ANIMALS (2005-ongoing)

  • THE ANIMALS (2005-ongoing)

  • THE ANIMALS (2005-ongoing)

• 

  Gregory Buchakjian

  • NIGHTHAWKS (Lebanon, 2007-2009)

    After the 2006 war, Lebanon's social and political climate was unstable. Public space – from the media to the street – was permeated by fear and paranoia. For a generation of Beirut's young residents, the night became the ultimate free space. They met one another during decadent underground parties, where everything revolved around beauty, designer clothes and sex appeal. But in Gregory Buchakjian's photos the underlying anxiety and violence is still palpable.

  • NIGHTHAWKS (Lebanon, 2007-2009)

  • NIGHTHAWKS (Lebanon, 2007-2009)

• 

  Estan Cabigas

  • THE NEW CATHEDRALS (The Philippines, 2010-ongoing)

    Some of the biggest shopping malls in the world are in The Philippines, a developing country that is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Its population spends so much of their free time – and the billions that family members living overseas send back home – in these shoppers' paradises that they have begun to form the heart of the community. To oblige its followers, the Catholic Church has started to hold Masses in the shopping malls – in a quiet corner, the atrium, or a purpose-built chapel. That, says Estan Cabigas, underscores how shopping malls have become the new cathedrals.

  • THE NEW CATHEDRALS (The Philippines, 2010-ongoing)

• 

  Alejandro Cartagena

  • SUBURBIA MEXICANA (Mexico, 2007-2010)

    For the last four years the Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena has been taking pictures of the urban expansions the Mexican government is promoting around the industrial city of Monterrey. On the edge of the nine cities that together form the conurbation of Monterrey, 400,000 new dwellings are rising at a lightning rate. Often these houses are built on the cheapest land and in places without adequate infrastructure. Cartagena recorded how the new residents try to make a home for themselves while coping with traffic jams, uncertain water supplies, uncared-for public spaces, vandalism and criminal gangs.

  • SUBURBIA MEXICANA (Mexico, 2007-2010)

  • SUBURBIA MEXICANA (Mexico, 2007-2010)

  • SUBURBIA MEXICANA (Mexico, 2007-2010)

  • SUBURBIA MEXICANA (Mexico, 2007-2010)

• 

  Carlos Cazalis

  • IN NISHINARI WARD (Japan, 2005-ongoing)

    Only three metro stations for the chic business district of Japan's second city, Osaka, lie in the Kamagasaki district. Although twenty thousand people live there, the district is not to be found on any city maps. It is a slum and a blot on Japanese society. Kamagasaki is largely populated by men over the age of 55, without homes, jobs or dignity, abandoned by their families, victims of alcoholism, and prey for organised crime and Christian charitable organisations. The pride of the Japanese reconstruction and urbanisation of yore pines away on less than a square kilometre, while the rest of the city roars ahead in a hectic industrial, capitalistic and technologically advanced consumerism.

  • IN NISHINARI WARD (Japan, 2005-ongoing)

  • IN NISHINARI WARD (Japan, 2005-ongoing)

  • IN NISHINARI WARD (Japan, 2005-ongoing)

  • IN NISHINARI WARD (Japan, 2005-ongoing)

• 

  Tiane Doan na Champassak

  • KOLKATA (India, 2008-2011)

    The life of Tiane Doan Na Champassak's uncle reads like an adventure story: stationed in Algiers during the Second World War, later involved in secret missions in occupied China and Indochina. But his autobiography, so worth reading, begins in Calcutta, today called Kolkata. Those scenes inspired his nephew to explore the streets of that teeming city with its millions of inhabitants, with all their extremes: wealth and poverty, splendour and squalor, ancient and modern, beautiful and ugly. It is in these streets, according to the photographer, that you see the essence of India's reality.

  • KOLKATA (India, 2008-2011)

  • KOLKATA (India, 2008-2011)

  • KOLKATA (India, 2008-2011)

  • KOLKATA (India, 2008-2011)

• 

  Rasel Chowdhury

  • DESPERATE URBANIZATION (Bangladesh, 2011)

    For centuries the Buriganga river has been the most important waterway in the city of Dhaka, which now has over a million inhabitants. Many of them use the Buriganga to transport goods, or as a quick way of reaching the hinterland. But with the city's uncontrolled growth this vital artery is increasingly constricted. Pollution from homes, ships and chemical factories undermines the river's function. Once the Buriganga was a blessing for Dhaka; now Dhaka has become a curse for the Buriganga.

  • DESPERATE URBANIZATION (Bangladesh, 2011)

  • DESPERATE URBANIZATION (Bangladesh, 2011)

  • DESPERATE URBANIZATION (Bangladesh, 2011)

• 

  Xavier Comas

  • TOKYO UP, DOWN (Japan, 2009)

    Post-industrial urban society demands an efficient use of space. For decades the solution lay in skyscrapers, which fundamentally altered social space and the structure of communities. The lift, a form of transportation that makes vertical living possible, has played a key role in this. Xavier Comas recorded the lifts of Tokyo in black and white, revealing the essential paradox of estrangement in the metropolis: emotional distance cheek by jowl with unavoidable physical proximity.

  • TOKYO UP, DOWN (Japan, 2009)

  • TOKYO UP, DOWN (Japan, 2009)

  • TOKYO UP, DOWN (Japan, 2009)

  • TOKYO UP, DOWN (Japan, 2009)

• 

  Carol Condé & Karl Beveridge

  • LIBERTY LOST (G20, TORONTO) (Canada, 2010)

    LIBERTY LOST (G20, TORONTO) is a response to the large-scale, repressive deployment of police during the G20 meeting in Toronto, held in 2010. The staged image is loosely based on Eugene Delacroix’s painting 'Liberty Guiding the People' (also called 'Liberty on the Barricades'). Where Delacroix visualised the struggle for democracy in the 1830s, LIBERTY LOST deals with the city as hotbed of resistance, and the boundaries that are imposed by a democracy that functions primarily to protect private property and wealth.

• 

  Stephen Dupont

  • A TALE OF TWO SLUMS (India / Indonesia, 2003)

    As a part of a long-running project on poverty and globalisation, Stephen Dupont made life-sized portraits, shot on Polaroid stock, in the slums of Mumbai and Jakarta. The reason for choosing these mega-cities was simple: where India has the largest Hindu community in the world, Indonesia has the largest Muslim community. What do the economic, political and religious developments caused by globalisation mean for these people?

  • A TALE OF TWO SLUMS (India / Indonesia, 2003)

  • A TALE OF TWO SLUMS (India / Indonesia, 2003)

  • A TALE OF TWO SLUMS (India / Indonesia, 2003)

  • A TALE OF TWO SLUMS (India / Indonesia, 2003)

• 

  Brad Farwell

  • RAPTURE (PANTHEON) (Italy, 2010)

    Every year millions of tourists, cameras hanging around their necks, roam through Rome. Their photographs of the monumental works of art and buildings become part of a photographic 'archive' that reaches back to the dawn of the medium. The photographer Brad Farwell believes the camera is central to the touristic experience. It enables the tourist to isolate history from the disagreeable present; the city is like a star who can only be photographed from her best side, the photo is the proof of having been there. It is a way that the tourist can isolate himself, from others and from a wealth of visual information.

  • RAPTURE (PANTHEON) (Italy, 2010)

  • RAPTURE (PANTHEON) (Italy, 2010)

  • RAPTURE (PANTHEON) (Italy, 2010)

  • RAPTURE (PANTHEON) (Italy, 2010)

• 

  Francilins

  • VI ELAS (Brazil, 2006)

    Guaicurus is a world within a world – a prostitution complex in the overwhelmingly Catholic and conservative city Belo Horizonte comprised of 20 buildings, where more than 5000 prostitutes offer sexual services for knockdown prices. Guaicurus has its own culture, with its own codes, religious practices and language: an ‘ecology of desire’ captured in intriguing diptychs by the photographer Castilho Leal Francilins, himself a resident of Belo Horizonte.

  • VI ELAS (Brazil, 2006)

  • VI ELAS (Brazil, 2006)

  • VI ELAS (Brazil, 2006)

  • VI ELAS (Brazil, 2006)

• 

  Andreas Gefeller

  • THE JAPAN SERIES (Japan, 2010)

    Each year, as part of the European Eyes on Japan project, a number of European photographers are invited to record their impression of the Land of the Rising Sun. Andreas Gefeller turned his camera on utility, to which transformers and tangles of wires are attached. By photographing the poles twice from below, and then assembling an image in which the pole itself has disappeared, he creates an abstract image that permits us to see something old and familiar in a whole new way.

  • THE JAPAN SERIES (Japan, 2010)

  • THE JAPAN SERIES (Japan, 2010)

• 

  Ugnius Gelguda

  • SPACETIME (2008)

    In his pictures of anonymous passers-by, Ugnius Gelguda lays bare inescapable elements of modern urban life: alienation and exclusion. He makes no effort to probe their personal histories or the context. On the contrary, through overexposure he removes all the details, and the situations and figures become more universal and interchangeable.

  • SPACETIME (2008)

  • SPACETIME (2008)

  • SPACETIME (2008)

  • SPACETIME (2008)

• 

  Reinier Gerritsen

  • THE EUROPEANS (2005-2007)

    Stretching the 'decisive moment' into a decisive minute: that's what Reinier Gerritsen has in mind with his experimental street photography. He makes a series of images of people in the city in rapid succession, one after another, like frames in a film. In this way he reveals more than jut one photo can: the direction they are looking, posture, isolation and love, the choreography of the group. In the computer he assembles one universal and cinematic photo from all these images.

  • THE EUROPEANS (2005-2007)

  • THE EUROPEANS (2005-2007)

• 

  Christoph Gielen

  • CIPHERS (United States, 2010)

    With his aerial photography of American urban areas, the German photographer Christoph Gielen reveals a number of their underlying paradigms. The American city is a phenomenon that is based on auto use. It is an expression of the ‘bigger is better’ attitude that went with the unrestrained investment in home ownership and commercial real estate, in an era when distance and gasoline prices were hardly a consideration. The central question Gielen poses to us is this: is this type of urban design tenable? And, implicitly: what should future-oriented urban planning look like?

  • CIPHERS (United States, 2010)

  • CIPHERS (United States, 2010)

  • CIPHERS (United States, 2010)

  • CIPHERS (United States, 2010)

• 

  Ashley Gilbertson

  • RECESSION IN NEW YORK (United States, 2008-2009)

    On 14 September, 2008, financial markets around the world crashed, a direct consequence of the collapse of Bear Sterns and Lehmann Brothers, and the threatened failure of many other banks. In the months after that Ashley Gilbertson recorded the atmosphere on Wall Street in sombre black and white: the worried faces, the unbelief, the despair and the dejection. But he also looked at the consequences for ordinary New Yorkers, who were confronted with unemployment, a growing number of homeless, and shuttered stores. Resilient, they try to make the best of it.

  • RECESSION IN NEW YORK (United States, 2008-2009)

  • RECESSION IN NEW YORK (United States, 2008-2009)

  • RECESSION IN NEW YORK (United States, 2008-2009)

  • RECESSION IN NEW YORK (United States, 2008-2009)

• 

  Paul Gofferjé

  • BEIRUT PANODRAMA’S (Lebanon, 1977-2004)

    In 1977 Paul Gofferjé worked as a volunteer photographer for a Christian school for the deaf in Beirut. He arrived during the first ceasefire in fifteen years. Naïve as he was, Gofferjé went out into Beirut to photograph the city, although journalists were being murdered and kidnapped. In 2004 he returned and showed ten photographs from his archive on the street. It proved difficult to find the places again where he had made the photos: new construction had erased the past. Gofferjé was approached by people who were surprised that as early as 1977 so may buildings had already been damaged. They began to tell their stories, parts of which have been written out on the panoramas that Gofferjé made in 2004.
    

  • BEIRUT PANODRAMA’S (Lebanon, 1977-2004)

• 

  Dionisio González

  • FAVELA – AN ASSEMBLED CITY (Brazil, 2004-2007)

    It is rare to hear anything positive about the favelas, the slums of Brazilian cities. Dionisio Gonzáles presents a contrasting view of them in his visual collages which bring together elements of the favelas and of hyper-modern new buildings in lively, colourful images. This is more than a formal game with photographs: González uses the results to begin dialogue with local authorities and inspire them to improving the neighbourhoods.

  • FAVELA – AN ASSEMBLED CITY (Brazil, 2004-2007)

• 

  Nadja Groux

  • 127th@StNick (United States, 2005-2010)

    For five years Nadja Groux photographed the same street corner in New York, from the window of her apartment on the fifth storey. What began as a game – stealing moments – grow into a consistent series of street scenes that took place on the corner of 127th Street and St. Nicholas Terrace in Harlem. With her series, arranged like a story board, Groux, both an artist and a social anthropologist, exposes the diverse forms of observation and control in the neighbourhood: from police helicopters and security cameras to the drug dealer's ‘footsoldiers’ guarding their territory, the photographer's secret gaze, and ultimately, our gaze.

  • 127th@StNick (United States, 2005-2010)

  • 127th@StNick (United States, 2005-2010)

  • 127th@StNick (United States, 2005-2010)

• 

  Kai - Uwe Gundlach

  • THE CROWD (2010)

    Everywhere in the world's cities large groups of people come together at various places, for diverse reasons. Whether it is at a pedestrian crossing, in parks, swimming pools, sports stadiums or in factories and offices, the city compels closeness. Kai Uwe Gundlach sought out elevated points and recorded the bustle from above. On the one hand, that perspective separates us from the chaos, while at the same time it underscores how the individual becomes but a cog in the mass nature of urban life.

  • THE CROWD (2010)

  • THE CROWD (2010)

  • THE CROWD (2010)

  • THE CROWD (2010)

• 

  Pawel Jaszczuk

  • HIGH FASHION (Japan, 2010)

    Nowhere in the world is the pressure of work as great as it is in Tokyo. The 'salary men', wage slaves who flock to the offices in droves early in the morning, pull twelve-hour days and are then expected to accompany the boss to dinners and drinking bouts. Some office workers become so exhausted that they fall asleep in the middle of the street. Pawel Jaszczuk recorded them in images which at first sight are amusing, but on further reflection are tragic.

  • HIGH FASHION (Japan, 2010)

  • HIGH FASHION (Japan, 2010)

  • HIGH FASHION (Japan, 2010)

  • HIGH FASHION (Japan, 2010)

• 

  Jiang Jian

  • CITY BUILDERS (China, 2007)

    Since the 1980s there has been a continuing, massive migration from the Chinese countryside to the expanding cities. Many who once lived in rural areas have found employment in the army of construction workers that has been needed to shape China's growing cities. In 2007 Jiang Jian was commissioned by a property developer to record the construction of 81 villas on the edge of Shanghai. These pricey retreats were built by farm labourers. By contrasting the villas with the labourers' rural villages, the photographer compactly visualises the crazy and sometimes disorienting changes in China.

  • CITY BUILDERS (China, 2007)

  • CITY BUILDERS (China, 2007)

  • CITY BUILDERS (China, 2007)

• 

  Gabriel Jones

  • UNTITLED SERIES (United States, 2010)

    Working together with the rock band Arcade Fire as well as Vincent Morisset and Caroline Robert, Gabriel Jones photographed several suburbs in Texas. The series investigates the experience of living in North American suburbia and the memories that such a landscape can imprint on those who grew up there. Ultimately eight photos were used for eight different covers for the album The Suburbs, which was good for a Grammy and the Brit Award 2011 as the best album.

  • UNTITLED SERIES (United States, 2010)

  • UNTITLED SERIES (United States, 2010)

  • UNTITLED SERIES (United States, 2010)

• 

  Nadav Kander

  • JOHANNESBURG AND SOWETO (Working title) (South Africa, 2010)

    Nadav Kander grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was only after he came to England at the age of twenty-one that he realised how much the aggressive society of his old home had undermined his identity and sense of justice. Returning after thirty years, at the same time nostalgic and with the clearer gaze of an outsider, he encountered an overwhelmingly Black community in a city built with White money. The contempt for the polluted and dangerous surroundings was at odds with Soweto, where Kander had never been before. There the feeling of oppression was gone, and optimism, solidarity and pride ruled the now clean streets.

  • JOHANNESBURG AND SOWETO (Working title) (South Africa, 2010)

  • JOHANNESBURG AND SOWETO (Working title) (South Africa, 2010)

  • JOHANNESBURG AND SOWETO (Working title) (South Africa, 2010)

  • JOHANNESBURG AND SOWETO (Working title) (South Africa, 2010)

• 

  Yannis Karpouzis

  • ATHENS, A SYSTEM ON TURMOIL (Greece, 2008-2011)

    The word 'crisis' doesn't refer just to economics, but also to psychological process. The economic measures taken when the Greek national debt become untenable have plunged people from Utopia to Dystopia. By means of abstraction in the photographic image, Yannis Karpouzis seeks to make this new psychological reality of Athens palpable. The city, once full of light, is swallowed by darkness. The Olympic dream has shattered. What remains is uncertainty.

  • ATHENS, A SYSTEM ON TURMOIL (Greece, 2008-2011)

  • ATHENS, A SYSTEM ON TURMOIL (Greece, 2008-2011)

  • ATHENS, A SYSTEM ON TURMOIL (Greece, 2008-2011)

  • ATHENS, A SYSTEM ON TURMOIL (Greece, 2008-2011)

• 

  Gareth Kingdon

  • HIDDEN CITIES (2009-ongoing)

    In his long-term project HIDDEN CITIES Gareth Kingdon turns his gaze to the world's largest slums. Without denying the difficulties that go with life in them, he wants to confront the Western viewer with their positive aspects. “I show what we can learn from the slums and their residents,’ says Kingdon. “At the same time one sees what will be lost, in terms of community, culture, innovation and industry, when the slums are subjected to urban renewal.” HIDDEN CITIES does not emphasize the differences between the slum dwellers and ourselves, but rather our common humanity.

  • HIDDEN CITIES (2009-ongoing)

  • HIDDEN CITIES (2009-ongoing)

  • HIDDEN CITIES (2009-ongoing)

• 

  Thomas Kneubühler

  • OFFICE 2000 (Canada, 2003-2008)

    Office buildings are only accessible to those who work there. They are centres of concentrated power – and as such must be guarded by surveillance cameras and security guards. But at night their hidden inner worlds become visible for the outside world too. Thanks to all that light behind the glass – whether a lone office worker is still sitting at the computer or not – the buildings become as transparent as an aquarium. Thomas Kneubühler photographed them from a high vantage point, so that his gaze can penetrate deep into a world as sterile as it is intimate.

  • OFFICE 2000 (Canada, 2003-2008)

  • OFFICE 2000 (Canada, 2003-2008)

  • OFFICE 2000 (Canada, 2003-2008)

• 

  Katrin Koenning

  • THIRTEEN: TWENTY LACUNA (Australia, 2009-2011)

    The photographer Katrin Koenning is fascinated by the hustle and bustle of the big city. What happens there with strangers who packed together in the same busy public spaces? In Melbourne she found an alley where the sunlight only penetrates for twenty minutes a day, around lunchtime. People rush past, on their way for coffee and a sandwich. During those brief minutes everything that is so ordinary briefly becomes special. A conversation, a face, a detail, the muffled sound of an iPod. Who are these people? What are their stories?

  • THIRTEEN: TWENTY LACUNA (Australia, 2009-2011)

  • THIRTEEN: TWENTY LACUNA (Australia, 2009-2011)

  • THIRTEEN: TWENTY LACUNA (Australia, 2009-2011)

  • THIRTEEN: TWENTY LACUNA (Australia, 2009-2011)

• 

  Laura Konttinen

  • CITYSCAPES (2009-ongoing)

    Laura Konttinen discovered that a stay in a European city changed her from an artist into a tourist. It is difficult to break away from the conventions of the snapshot. “The critical approach gets lost, and time and again I made the same generic images.” Once back home she recovered her artistic freedom again by approaching her pictures conceptually – each of her CITYSCAPES is comprised of 36 images (a full roll) that she has laid over one another digitally. It is a further generalisation of the already general, and a combination of the boring, in order to arrive at a new and intriguing image.

  • CITYSCAPES (2009-ongoing)

• 

  Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen

  • BYKER (United Kingdom, 1983) and BYKER REVISITED (United Kingdom, 2009)

    Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen went to Byker, a district in Newcastle which had fallen on hard times with the decline of shipbuilding, for the first time in 1969. For a decade, as a member of the film and photography collective Amber she recorded its people, who faced the changes in their neighbourhood with humour and dignity. Urban renewal proved to be a disaster for its working class culture and sense of community: eighty percent of the original residents would move away. Konttinen returned in 2003. She found a number of old acquaintances, but also recorded the asylum seekers who were being housed in quarters which were difficult to rent out.

  • BYKER (United Kingdom, 1983) and BYKER REVISITED (United Kingdom, 2009)

  • BYKER (United Kingdom, 1983) and BYKER REVISITED (United Kingdom, 2009)

  • BYKER (United Kingdom, 1983) and BYKER REVISITED (United Kingdom, 2009)

  • BYKER (United Kingdom, 1983) and BYKER REVISITED (United Kingdom, 2009)

• 

  Marcus Koppen

  • MEGACITY – HONG KONG (Hong Kong, 2007-2009)

    In the last six decades no city in the world has undergone such dramatic changes as Hong Kong. The city is a Muse for the German photographer Marcus Koppen: he has recorded the city's surrealistic, artificial atmosphere and nocturnal heat in urban landscapes that seem to be simultaneously futuristic and timeless. Moreover, in the almost abstract beauty of the city's play of lights the perceptive viewer sees a hint of prodigality. Koppen is fascinated by the rapid changes in mega-cities, which have to be carefully guided in the right direction by architects and urban planners. Will they be able to solve the problems of urbanisation?

  • MEGACITY – HONG KONG (Hong Kong, 2007-2009)

  • MEGACITY – HONG KONG (Hong Kong, 2007-2009)

• 

  Maros Krivy

  • NEW COAT OF PAINT (Central Europe, 2010-2011)

    Asked to characterise the residential flats in what was once the East Bloc, most people would reach for the words ‘grey’ and ‘drab’. To try to change that perception, many of these prefab buildings have been given new layers of paint, in colours that not only suggest a utopian promise of cheerfulness and diversity, but also polish up the past. Maros Krivy photographed these buildings in various former communist bloc countries – but black and white. He deprives us of the simple pleasure of smiling at the idiosyncratic colour combinations, but in his captions lists the colours we would have seen. Is a metropolitan Utopia really dependent on something as superficial as a lick of paint? Under layers of paint, doesn't the city remain just as drab as ever?
    

  • NEW COAT OF PAINT (Central Europe, 2010-2011)

  • NEW COAT OF PAINT (Central Europe, 2010-2011)

  • NEW COAT OF PAINT (Central Europe, 2010-2011)

• 

  Ikuru Kuwajima

  • ASTANA’S WINTER URBANSCAPE (Kazakhstan, 2011)

    Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, is the second coldest capital city in the world. But thanks to income from oil and gas, the city has been transformed from a barren Siberian outpost to a metropolis with a bubbling night life and futuristic buildings. There are tropical swimming paradises, and its oceanarium has the distinction of being the most distant from an ocean, of any in the world. Yet the city has been unable to significantly increase its population – the cold frightens people off. In a series of diptychs Ikuru Kuwajima displays the ironic beauty of Astana.

  • ASTANA’S WINTER URBANSCAPE (Kazakhstan, 2011)

  • ASTANA’S WINTER URBANSCAPE (Kazakhstan, 2011)

  • ASTANA’S WINTER URBANSCAPE (Kazakhstan, 2011)

• 

  Selvaprakash Lakshmanan

  • THE RURAL EXODUS (India, 2008-ongoing)

    Over the years a complex interplay of factors – failed harvests, the burden of debts, drought, floods and caste discrimination – drew millions of India's rural population to its expanding cities. They took any jobs they could get, often in construction. The fact that, to all intents and purposes, they were without any rights was translated into the conditions under which they lived: in temporary slums thrown up around the building sites, without water or electricity. Underpaid work, child labour and sexual intimidation are the order of the day. The workers endure it all, yearning for the villages they left behind.

  • THE RURAL EXODUS (India, 2008-ongoing)

  • THE RURAL EXODUS (India, 2008-ongoing)

  • THE RURAL EXODUS (India, 2008-ongoing)

  • THE RURAL EXODUS (India, 2008-ongoing)

• 

  LawickMüller

  • URBAN STAGE (Germany, 2005-ongoing)

    Public space in cities can be thought of as a stage on which people present and define themselves, and forge themselves into groups. Whether they come together intentionally or accidentally, regularly or irregularly, groups always function according to codes, outward similarities and an affinity with a specific place. The pair LawickMüller show us this theatrical aspect of the urban milieu in their large format tableaux.

  • URBAN STAGE (Germany, 2005-ongoing)

• 

  Gina LeVay

  • THE SANDHOG PROJECT (United States, 2009)

    The construction workers who labour 250 meters under Manhattan on the almost one-hundred kilometre long tunnel that will bring drinking water to New York City are called 'sandhogs'. Since this project began in 1970, one worker has been killed in a construction accident for every mile of the tunnel completed. Few know of this invisible world, which is nevertheless so important for daily life in the city. Gina LeVay bring his underground world out of the darkness, and underscores how the city is a living and complex sculpture. With photographs, video installations and the web, LeVay challenges us to reflect on the ways in which we – and all our actions – are interwoven with the city's systems.

  • THE SANDHOG PROJECT (United States, 2009)

  • THE SANDHOG PROJECT (United States, 2009)

  • THE SANDHOG PROJECT (United States, 2009)

• 

  Sebastian Liste

  • URBAN QUILOMBO (Brazil, 2010)

    Eight years ago sixty homeless families in the Brazilian state of Salvador de Bahia decided to build new lives for themselves in the ruins of an old chocolate factory. Since then the population in the complex has grown to 129 families. In these accommodation – which further disintegrates after each rainy season, necessitating internal moves – they try to build a dignified existence. All of the problems of the street – drugs, violence, prostitution – are also be be found within the complex. Liste sees a living space like this as a continuation of a long Brazilian tradition, which began with quilombos, small hamlets where fugitive slaves found refuge. Once again the underprivileged come together, but this time in an urban setting.

  • URBAN QUILOMBO (Brazil, 2010)

  • URBAN QUILOMBO (Brazil, 2010)

  • URBAN QUILOMBO (Brazil, 2010)

  • URBAN QUILOMBO (Brazil, 2010)

• 

  Martin Luijendijk

  • EDGES OF THE CITY (Netherlands, 2004-2008)

    What does a space say about the people who move about in it? In EDGES OF THE CITY Martin Luijendijk photographed the private spaces in which professionals do their work, at moments when their users have stepped out temporarily. These specialised, functional worlds form the edges of the metropolitan world. The tranquillity of the images – apparently theatre sets during an intermission – contrast with the complex networks of which their users are a part. In CONTINUATION Luijendijk records buildings that are just ready to be delivered, or demolished – in a way that the distinction disappears. There is no history, no future, no progress and no decline.

  • EDGES OF THE CITY (Netherlands, 2004-2008)

  • EDGES OF THE CITY (Netherlands, 2004-2008)

  • CONTINUATION (Netherlands, 2004-2008)

  • CONTINUATION (Netherlands, 2004-2008)

  • CONTINUATION (Netherlands, 2004-2008)

• 

  Sayed Asif Mahmud

  • MY CITY OF UNHEARD PRAYERS (Bangladesh, 2011)

    The young photographer Sayed Asif Mahmud knows first-hand what it means to work in the exponentially expanding third-world metropolis of Dhaka. Coming from the city's relatively quiet outskirts, he was confronted with the individualism and pursuit of success that characterises hyper-dynamic urban life. Hesitant about joining in the race, he was overcome by feelings of loneliness and despair. But slowly the city began to change him. It is this continuing process of perception and experience that he seeks to pour into images.

  • MY CITY OF UNHEARD PRAYERS (Bangladesh, 2011)

  • MY CITY OF UNHEARD PRAYERS (Bangladesh, 2011)

  • MY CITY OF UNHEARD PRAYERS (Bangladesh, 2011)

  • MY CITY OF UNHEARD PRAYERS (Bangladesh, 2011)

• 

  Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre

  • THE RUINS OF DETROIT (United States, 2005-2010)

    Thanks to the auto industry, in the 1950s Detroit, with a population of two million, was the fourth largest city in the United States. And thanks to the factories moving to the outskirts of the city, to 'white flight' to the suburbs, social unrest in the 1960s and the crisis in the auto industry, the city's population fell by half. Detroit became a post-apocalyptic décor of ruins. As Marchand and Meffre note, “No less than the pyramids of Egypt, the Colosseum in Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, its monuments, still fascinating in their decay, are the remains of a great, lost empire.”

  • THE RUINS OF DETROIT (United States, 2005-2010)

• 

  Massimo Mastrorillo

  • CITY MODELS (China / Japan / Germany / United Arab Emirates, 2009)

    What makes one city centre better than another? What elements raise a metropolis to being a model to imitate? Massimo Mastrorillo shows us that the answer is in a combination of apparent contradictions. Modern conveniences, but also history, traditions and the suggestion of eternity. Spectacular buildings, but also trees and water. In CITY MODELS Mastrorillo investigates the contrast between the desires of the human soul and outwardly brutal urban planning. How does a feeling of being at home arise within them?

  • CITY MODELS (China / Japan / Germany / United Arab Emirates, 2009)

  • CITY MODELS (China, Japan, Germany, United Arab Emirates, 2009)

  • CITY MODELS (China / Japan / Germany / United Arab Emirates, 2009)

• 

  Andreas Meichsner

  • 32.000.000 (Japan, 2004-2005)

    Japan is rather mountainous, and has relatively little land on which to build. That has led to a number of extremely densely populated areas, of which the Tokyo-Yokohama agglomerate is the best example. With 35 million inhabitants and an area that is demarcated by mountains and the sea, it is a question of making the most of the space. Besides the sky-high real estate prices, this fosters an architecture that gets the most out of what room there is. Meichsner does not investigate just buildings of this sort; he also looks at the social effects go along with the population density, trying to feel at home while having to watch every square inch.

  • 32.000.000 (Japan, 2004-2005)

  • 32.000.000 (Japan, 2004-2005)

  • 32.000.000 (Japan, 2004-2005)

  • 32.000.000 (Japan, 2004-2005)

• 

  Cecile Mella

  • FICTIONAL CAPE TOWN (South Africa, 2009-2010)

    Although smaller than Hollywood, Cape Town also has a lively film industry, albeit they primarily shoot advertising spots for foreign companies who gladly take advantage of favourable bank exchange rates and a sunny climate. For a day or two, parts of Cape Town are transformed into European or American locations. A vineyard becomes a Dutch farmstead, a café a Parisian bistro. Cécile Mella lifts the veil on these attractive and often funny illusions, but in a characteristic mountain or building the attentive viewer can still catch a glimpse of Cape Town itself

  • FICTIONAL CAPE TOWN (South Africa, 2009-2010)

  • FICTIONAL CAPE TOWN (South Africa, 2009-2010)

  • FICTIONAL CAPE TOWN (South Africa, 2009-2010)

  • FICTIONAL CAPE TOWN (South Africa, 2009-2010)

• 

  Jean-Marc Meunier

  • SHOPPING STREETS (Europe, 1998-2010)

    There will always be shopping in urban centres. Where in the past the markets were the heart of the city, today one has pedestrian malls. In a time of globalisation, Jean-Marc Meunier shows us that the shopping streets in European cities increasingly looking like one another. Whether you are in Madrid or Stockholm, Geneva or Groningen, it's the same stores, the same brands, the same snacks – and the same people.

  • SHOPPING STREETS (Europe, 1998-2010)

  • SHOPPING STREETS (Europe, 1998-2010)

  • SHOPPING STREETS (Europe, 1998-2010)

  • SHOPPING STREETS (Europe, 1998-2010)

• 

  Ivan Mikhaylov

  • METROPOLIS (Russia, 2008)

    Moscow, with its million inhabitants, always seems to be balanced on the edge of break down. Traffic jams, overfull metros, aggressive advertising, endless streams of people – there is no escape. But there is also lots of hidden loneliness. Ivan Mikhaylov photographed the many young people who came to Moscow from the provinces. Some are in their element, others become overwhelmed. What do they want from this city? What are their dreams, and how do they feel?

  • METROPOLIS (Russia, 2008)

  • METROPOLIS (Russia, 2008)

  • METROPOLIS (Russia, 2008)

• 

  Guillaume Millet

  • KURAI (Japan, 2009)

    In Japanese kurai means obscure and inscrutable, precisely the opposite of akarui, which means social and convivial. Inspired by the obsessive literature of Murakami Ryu and the neurotic cinema of Tsukamoto Shinya, Guillaume Millet went to Tokyo in search of their forbidding aesthetic. Roaming through the metropolis by night, he encountered the lost souls and cold-hearted monsters he sought.

  • KURAI (Japan, 2009)

  • KURAI (Japan, 2009)

  • KURAI (Japan, 2009)

  • KURAI (Japan, 2009)

• 

  Andreas Müller-Pohle

  • HONG KONG WATERS (Hong Kong, 2009-2011)

    Anyone imagining Hong Kong, thinks first and foremost of its extreme population density and vertical character: the city has the highest number of skyscrapers in the world. But another defining characteristic is the water that surrounds and cuts through the city. With a coastline that stretches for 700 kilometres, 260 islands, harbours, rivers, waterfalls and reservoirs, Hong Kong is a true city of water. Andreas Müller-Pohle brings together the horizontal and vertical dimensions by capturing the city in pictures and sound from the surface of its waters.

  • HONG KONG WATERS (Hong Kong, 2009-2011)

  • HONG KONG WATERS (Hong Kong, 2009-2011)

  • HONG KONG WATERS (Hong Kong, 2009-2011)

  • HONG KONG WATERS (Hong Kong, 2009-2011)

• 

  Michael Najjar

  • LIQUID CITIES (2011)

    As in all his work, in LIQUID CITIES Michael Najjar investigates the society of the future, which, according to him, will be dominated by information technology. He works out a largely theoretical concept: architecture that is not rigid, but which is comprised of flexible forms that are constantly in motion. In LIQUID CITY cities are literally fluid – buildings change with the requirements of their users. The boundary between architecture and cyberspace blurs – a development that we are now already seeing in smart cities and Tokyo’s new Media City.

  • LIQUID CITIES (2011)

• 

  Matthew Niederhauser

  • COUNTERFEIT PARADISES (China, 2011)

    Thanks to China's spectacular economic growth, which translated into a larger, better off middle class, international tourism by Chinese has grown sharply. Ever more Chinese travel to other countries, where they spend more money. An alternative is the Windows on the World park in Shenzhen, where replicas of famous bits of foreign countries have been recreated. Here the Chinese can whet their appetite for seeing the real thing. But, Matthew Niederhauser warns, this is also a form of indoctrination, focused on consumption – a process that will prove just as empty as previous social movements in China.

  • COUNTERFEIT PARADISES (China, 2011)

  • COUNTERFEIT PARADISES (China, 2011)

• 

  Simon Norfolk

  • PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (Afghanistan, 2010-2011)

    In 2010 and 2011 Simon Norfolk travelled through Afghanistan, following the footsteps of the Irish war photographer John Burke (1843-1900), a pioneer who between 1878 and 1880 photographed in the country, then as now torn by war. The photographs that Norfolk made on his trip are a response to, and in some cases his own interpretation of Burke's war photographs, which are shown next to Norfolk's. Norfolk shows us two sorts of perverted cities. On the one hand there is a city like Kabul, with a flourishing security and military industry, almost no normal middle class or generally accepted economic production, and a lively informal market. On the other hand, he encountered huge military bases, with their busy airfields and extensive amenities. The result is a 'tale of two cities' – both sick and untenable.

  • PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (Afghanistan, 2010-2011)

  • PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (Afghanistan, 2010-2011)

  • PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (Afghanistan, 2010-2011)

  • PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (Afghanistan, 2010-2011)

• 

  Offmanphoto

  • ATOMS (Italy, 2009-2010)

    More than half the world's heritage, as it is defined by UNESCO, is to be found in Italy. Millions of tourists travel to Italy every year for the art and the famous buildings from antiquity and the Renaissance. Italy's interest in this tourism is no small matter – it generates around twelve percent of the country's gross national product. Yet the government has decided to make deep cuts in provisions for the upkeep of its cultural heritage. Will Italy go from being the world's cultural Disneyland to being a run-down fun-fair? With ATOMS Offmanphoto, comprised of Pablo Balbontin Arenas and Luca Marinelli, underscores the central role that cultural heritage plays in Italy.

  • ATOMS (Italy, 2009-2010)

  • ATOMS (Italy, 2009-2010)

  • ATOMS (Italy, 2009-2010)

• 

  Sherman Ong

  • MOTHERLAND (Singapore, 2011)

    Singapore is a city-state with one of the highest concentrations of people – and of millionaires – in the world. The city also has a magnetic attraction for immigrants, many of whom come from China. Some have lived in the region for generations now and no longer speak their original language. Others are new, and wrestle with a sense of rootlessness and disorientation. In a series of video confessions they speak about their lives and future in a land that has mixed feelings about their presence.

  • MOTHERLAND (Singapore, 2011)

  • MOTHERLAND (Singapore, 2011)

  • MOTHERLAND (Singapore, 2011)

• 

  Louie Palu

  • FINANCIAL DISTRICT (Canada, 2006-2008)

    In the financial district of Toronto, Canada's biggest city, you find the headquarters of banks, stock brokerages, financial institutions and law firms. During the winter months, at night the district is also home to many homeless people, who are attracted by the waste heat from the massive heating installations. The hot air that is blown out through gratings on the pavement makes the nights, when temperatures can drop to twenty degrees below freezing, a bit more bearable. Palu shows how people use urban space to work and survive, sometimes despite the intentions of the planners and architects.

  • FINANCIAL DISTRICT (Canada, 2006-2008)

  • FINANCIAL DISTRICT (Canada, 2006-2008)

  • FINANCIAL DISTRICT (Canada, 2006-2008)

  • FINANCIAL DISTRICT (Canada, 2006-2008)

• 

  Max Pam

  • SUPERTOURIST CITIES (1971-2011)

    Despite globalisation, the world's most important tourist cities have been able to maintain their unique character. That is what makes a confrontation with a city like this – and particularly its buildings – such a rich and intriguing experience, says Max Pam. Anyone walking through the great European cities, or New York, feels the history that permeates the place. Pam records the buildings, and also the people, who on the other hand represent the present. Now and then they are brought together and fused into a new whole.

  • SUPERTOURIST CITIES (1971-2011)

  • SUPERTOURIST CITIES (1971-2011)

  • SUPERTOURIST CITIES (1971-2011)

  • SUPERTOURIST CITIES (1971-2011)

• 

  Ohm Phanphiroj

  • UNDERAGE (Thailand, 2011)

    Thailand has a reputation as the Asian epicentre of the sex industry. It is estimated that the country has 800,000 child prostitutes, who collectively generate about 3 % of the Gross National Product – a form of exploitation which has become an international scandal. By means of photography and video Phanphiroj tries to fathom the thoughts and experiences of under-age male prostitutes. These are penetrating portraits of lost souls, which call up questions about social problems, sexuality, corruption and morality.

  • UNDERAGE (Thailand, 2011)

  • UNDERAGE (Thailand, 2011)

  • UNDERAGE (Thailand, 2011)

• 

  Olivier Pin-Fat

  • DEAD LIGHT, BONE DRY (Thailand, 2004-2009)

    In a series of interrelated photos Olivier Pin-Fat evokes his physical and mental confrontation with Bangkok. Beginning in 2004, during the infamous Thai war on drugs, he gives his subjective view of the ghastly political landscape. He does that by working with 135 and 120 millimetre film that he mauls like a vandal. The formlessness and distortion is a reflection of his state of mind, of the unpredictability of the city, and of what the city allowed him to rescue from the debris.

  • DEAD LIGHT, BONE DRY (Thailand, 2004-2009)

  • DEAD LIGHT, BONE DRY (Thailand, 2004-2009)

  • DEAD LIGHT, BONE DRY (Thailand, 2004-2009)

  • DEAD LIGHT, BONE DRY (Thailand, 2004-2009)

• 

  Dana Popa

  • OUR FATHER CEAUSESCU (Romania, 2009-2011)

    Romania is a country with a complex reality. While the younger generation has grown up in a capitalist context, the remains of the communist past always dominated the landscape. The country's young people are like a soul that can not identify with the body in which it inhabits. Thanks to internet, the possibility of travelling and the freedom to consume, the communist reality of rationing and long queues at shops has become unthinkable. How do they navigate through this world that is theirs, but also is not?

  • OUR FATHER CEAUSESCU (Romania, 2009-2011)

  • OUR FATHER CEAUSESCU (Romania, 2009-2011)

  • OUR FATHER CEAUSESCU (Romania, 2009-2011)

  • OUR FATHER CEAUSESCU (Romania, 2009-2011)

• 

  Martin Roemers

  • METROPOLIS (2010-ongoing)

    In his long-running project METROPOLIS Martin Roemers photographs cities with a population of more than ten million. The key question is how people can live in such a crowded and overwhelming environment. His photos suggest that despite the chaos, the cities have managed to preserve their human dimension. Look at the little stories that take place in the midst of the hustle and bustle: that of the street vendor, the commuter, the tourist, the passer-by. Everyone seeks his own direction in the modern, urban society.

  • METROPOLIS (2010-ongoing)

  • METROPOLIS (2010-ongoing)

  • METROPOLIS (2010-ongoing)

• 

  Edith Roux

  • LES DÉPOSSÉDÉS (China, 2011)

    For a half century now Kashgar, an oasis city in the extreme west of China, has had to endure aggressive Chinese colonisation. The population, overwhelmingly Islamic Uigurs, have had to look on as the old centre of the city was demolished and modernised. With that cultural artefacts disappeared that linked them with their history, when Kashgar was an important trading centre on the silk route. At the same time subsidies and tax advantages have encouraged Han Chinese to move to Chinas western provinces. These, and other pressures, have created an explosive situation in Kashgar.

  • LES DÉPOSSÉDÉS (China, 2011)

• 

  Carlos and Jason Sanchez

  • THE EVERYDAY (2009)

• 

  Hans-Christian Schink

  • L.A. NIGHT (United States, 2002-2003)

    Hans-Christian Schink went to Los Angeles in 2002 as a participant in a programme for German-American cultural exchange. He decided to photograph the city in two ways – with a view camera from high points on the edges of the city, and with a 35 mm camera, within the city. In both cases he worked in the middle of the night. The photos he made with the SLR he blew up and cropped down until all that remained were almost abstract, very grainy images. That LA no longer looks in any way like the clichéd image we all carry with us.

  • L.A. NIGHT (United States, 2002-2003)

  • L.A. NIGHT (United States, 2002-2003)

  • L.A. NIGHT (United States, 2002-2003)

• 

  Christina Seely

  • LUX (United States / Japan / Europe, 2005-2010)

    The massive impact man has had on Earth is visible even from space today. Christina Seely visited the urban areas that NASA's night maps show as the brightest sources of light. The light from these cities – all to be found in the United States, Western Europe and Japan – has an ambiguous significance. On the one hand, there is its beauty, on the other, the darker reality behind that beauty: energy consumption and the impact that has on the Earth. Traditionally light has always been an indicator of hope and progress. Paradoxically enough, Seely says, light is now a symbol of their opposites.

  • LUX (United States / Japan / Europe, 2005-2010)

  • LUX (United States / Japan / Europe, 2005-2010)

• 

  Matt Siber

  • THE UNTITLED PROJECT (China / Europe / North America, 2002-2011)

    A dominant element in the modern urban landscape is the way that the public is constantly being bombarded with images and text. Matt Siber investigated how greatly use of text and pictures differed in three culturally homogeneous regions which otherwise differ greatly: China, Europe and North America. On the left, the resulting diptychs show the cityscapes stripped of texts; on the right, the texts that were removed. In this way the role that visual communication plays in the consumption of our public space becomes more visible – and with that, we become more aware of the power it exercises.

  • THE UNTITLED PROJECT (China / Europe / North America, 2002-2011)

• 

  Darren Soh

  • POLITICAL LANDSCAPES (Singapore, 2011)

    In Singapore the political campaigns are generally short. In the ten days running up to an election political parties organise mass meetings, where they hammer away at their aims and ideals. Many public spaces, from sports stadium to parks, become political theatres. The nature of the gatherings – which also offer free entertainment – brings out tens of thousands of people. Darren Soh focuses not on the candidates, but on the locations themselves.

  • POLITICAL LANDSCAPES (Singapore, 2011)

  • POLITICAL LANDSCAPES (Singapore, 2011)

• 

  Elian Somers

  • CALIFORNIA CITY (United States, 2010-2011)

    In the 1950s the Czechoslovak sociologist Nathan K. Mendelsohn developed plans for California City, a utopian city in the desert that could relieve the pressures of population growth in Los Angeles and San Francisco. A grid of 52,000 parcels was laid out on 330 square kilometres of land, along with expressways, streets and utilities. There was also a park, the world's largest lake with a plastic liner, golf courses and model dwellings. Although initially all the lots were sold, California City still has only 14,000 residents. Elian Somers's project combines her photography with reproductions of old photos and a parcellation plan.

  • CALIFORNIA CITY (United States, 2010-2011)

  • CALIFORNIA CITY (United States, 2010-2011)

  • CALIFORNIA CITY (United States, 2010-2011)

  • CALIFORNIA CITY (United States, 2010-2011)

• 

  Will Steacy

  • DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS (United States, 2008-2010)

    For decades America's inner cities have suffered from neglect, shrinking government budgets, declining local economies, poor schools and problems from drugs and violence. “We are obsessed with Homeland Security,” Will Steacy says, “but we no longer see what is that we are fighting for.” While wandering the transitional zones between the airports and business districts at night, Steacy recorded the hopeless state of the American inner cities in large format images. His aim is to expose the problems – because otherwise nothing will ever be done about them.

  • DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS (United States, 2008-2010)

  • DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS (United States, 2008-2010)

• 

  Niels Stomps

  • METROPOLITAN AREA (United States, 2009-2011)

    In his work Niels Stomps examines changes that are so vast that people can hardly adjust to them. Urbanisation is one change of that sort. METROPOLITAN AREA shows a cross-section of New York and exposes the connections between the city and its residents. By literally laying bare the different layers of urban life – everything that takes place between the smog above the buildings and the sewers under them – thee series becomes a metaphor for life itself.

  • METROPOLITAN AREA (United States, 2009-2011)

  • METROPOLITAN AREA (United States, 2009-2011)

    In his work Niels Stomps examines changes that are so vast that people can hardly adjust to them. Urbanisation is one change of that sort. METROPOLITAN AREA shows a cross-section of New York and exposes the connections between the city and its residents. By literally laying bare the different layers of urban life – everything that takes place between the smog above the buildings and the sewers under them – thee series becomes a metaphor for life itself.

  • METROPOLITAN AREA (United States, 2009-2011)

  • METROPOLITAN AREA (United States, 2009-2011)

• 

  Franky Verdickt

  • TOTEM (2010)

    Building – and with it, urbanisation – is the way in which man has succeeded in bringing an inherently hostile nature under control and securing his own place in it. A flat or house is not just a utilitarian object, but also a totem, a flag planted in the ground, an marker of territory. It is the way that space is structured, brought under control, and ultimately transformed in a home. Franky Verdickt shows us these newly erected totems, shortly before people move into them and become part of their history.

  • TOTEM (2010)

  • TOTEM (2010)

• 

  Munem Wasif

  • OLD DHAKA – BELONGING (Bangladesh, 2005-2010)

    Puran Dhaka, the old centre of Dhaka, is a subject close to Munem Wasif's heart. “Here I learned to value well-cooked, fat food, discovered the beauty of rank slang, and rediscovered countrified impulse to want to hang onto things.” Family and tradition are important in old Dhaka. That is what binds people together there. But at the same time the atmosphere is pregnant with growth. For Wasif, these streets, this area, is more than a geographic reality. It is home.

  • OLD DHAKA – BELONGING (Bangladesh, 2005-2010)

  • OLD DHAKA – BELONGING (Bangladesh, 2005-2010)

  • OLD DHAKA – BELONGING (Bangladesh, 2005-2010)

• 

  Shen Wei

  • CHINESE SENTIMENT (China, 2008-2010)

    Although he grew up in Shanghai, for years now Shen Wei has lived and worked in New York. CHINESE SENTIMENT is his attempt to get back in touch with the authentic China. Wei Shen approaches the country in an intimate, personal manner, by looking beyond the political and economic aspects. The series becomes a personal journey through the private and public spaces of this gigantic land.

  • CHINESE SENTIMENT (China, 2008-2010)

  • CHINESE SENTIMENT (China, 2008-2010)

  • CHINESE SENTIMENT (China, 2008-2010)

  • CHINESE SENTIMENT (China, 2008-2010)

• 

  Hans Wilschut

  • NO TITLE (2008-ongoing)

    In his urban photography Hans Wilschut does not focus on the finished product, but on a 'moment in between', an interim state of development. His images of construction sites, which many might denigratingly term 'holes in the ground', reveal the idiosyncratic beauty of the incomplete, the building that is not yet smooth and polished. Wilschut himself describes his work as “ad hoc archaeology”. In cinematic photos, made with long exposures and a view camera, history is frozen at the moment that it takes place. At the same time, he records the dreams and desires that are being translated into steel, glass and concrete.

  • NO TITLE (2008-ongoing)

  • NO TITLE (2008-ongoing)

  • NO TITLE (2008-ongoing)

  • NO TITLE (2008-ongoing)

• 

  Michael Wolf

  • TOKYO COMPRESSION (Japan, 2008-2011)

    Always returning to the same small subway station in Tokyo, the German photographer Michael Wolf recorded the faces and bodies of commuters pressed up against the windows of the packed subway cars. The passengers stare vacantly, lost in their thoughts and sombre – apparently in the largest urban conglomerate people are reduced to the status of cattle. In his series TOKYO COMPRESSION Wolf focuses in on this detail and raises it to a symbol. In doing so he irrevocably poses the question: can people maintain their dignity and identity in the modern megalopolis?

  • TOKYO COMPRESSION (Japan, 2008-2011)

  • TOKYO COMPRESSION (Japan, 2008-2011)

  • TOKYO COMPRESSION (Japan, 2008-2011)

  • TOKYO COMPRESSION (Japan, 2008-2011)

• 

  Devin Yalkin

  • HADES (2010)

    In HADES Devin Yalkin is not so much photographing people, but rather the way they move in space, individually and collectively. He records the culmination in blurring faces, constantly changing gestures and melting bodies. The work suggests a series of illusions, the treacherousness of outward appearances. These are apparently images from a dream of an underworld, dark and gritty.

  • HADES (2010)

  • HADES (2010)

  • HADES (2010)

  • HADES (2010)

• 

  Yang Yongliang

  • Several series

    Yang Yongliang combines urban photography with the iconic visual language of traditional Chinese painting in a most intriguing way. Looked at more closely, his landscapes – in series like On the Quiet Water, Phantom Landscape and Heavenly City – are composed of apartment buildings and hoisting cranes. Yet they exude the restfulness of mountains and forests, of clouds in the sky. Yang Yongliang himself says “My wonderland is a mysterious place, the ideal for which we have been striving, and that we have in many respects already attained. Our life is easy there, fast, and let's be honest about it, comfortable. But never forget the price we have paid for this wonderland.”

  • Several series

  • Several series

• 

  Pablo Ziccarello

  • MICROCENTRO (Argentina, 1999-2003)

    There are many ways of looking at a city. In MICROCENTRO Pablo Ziccarello literally tries to read Buenos Aires, from the neon lighting, advertisements and other artificial illumination that colours the night. Each negative is exposed several times, at different times and places, over months and years of aimless wandering through the night. The result is a subjective experience of the city.

  • MICROCENTRO (Argentina, 1999-2003)

  • MICROCENTRO (Argentina, 1999-2003)

• 

  Kim Zwarts

  • US 2009/2011 (United States, 2009-2011)

    The Dutch photographer Kim Zwarts has travelled through the United States several times since 1982. In 2009 he wanted to investigate how his experiences and work from those years have influenced his later photography. Drawing on buildings that were designed by the architectural firm Morphosis, a number of important historical locations, and rural and urban landscapes that he found in his archive, Zwarts created quiescent landscapes – a functional architecture without people, petrified and frozen.

  • US 2009/2011 (United States, 2009-2011)

  • US 2009/2011 (United States, 2009-2011)

  • US 2009/2011 (United States, 2009-2011)

photographers 'Vivian Maier'

• 

  Vivian Maier

  • NEW YORK

  • NEW YORK, 1954

  • NEW YORK, 1954

  • FLORIDA, 1960

  • NEW YORK

  • SELF PORTRAIT

  • FLORIDA, 1957

photographers 'Public Bedroom'

• 

  Shahidul Alam

  • SLEEPING LIKE SAND / DHAKA

    Kadar moton ghumai literally translates to ‘sleeping like sand’. It is generally used for small children who drape themselves around their mother, sleeping as if the world didn’t exist. These children work long hours, often carrying heavy loads. Sleeping on a concrete floor under the open sky, might not be luxury. But when the body screams for rest, sleep comes easy.

• 

  Lino Hellings

  • COMMUNITY INTERACTION

    Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompéia, a community centre for sports and culture in Sao Paulo with a lively community interaction even when it is used for a short sleeping time. The robust and at the same time soft couches facilitate an after dinner nap for all classes.

• 

  Adolphus Opara

  • PUBLIC BEDROOM