Impression / Traces & Omens
With the main exhibition Traces & Omens containing over 400 photos, auxiliary exhibitions and a Satellite Programme in 70 venues in the city and province of Groningen, the Noorderlicht Photofestival is again the largest annual photo-event in the Netherlands and one of few in the world.
Main exhibition Traces & Omens, Der Aa-kerk
Ancillary show Promised Land, Noorderlicht Photogallery
Ancillary show Tsunami, Academie Minerva
Ancillary show Hidden Sites, Landgoed Verhildersum, Leens
Satellite pogramme: exhibitions of known and unknown photographers in museums, galleries and a variation of sites at over 70 locations around the city and province
Traces & Omens
Photography and the visualisation of time
Der Aa-kerkPhotography is said to be the medium of the split-second, the art of the decisive moment. In the blink of an eye it lends meaning to what takes place around us. Isolated from the sea of time which surrounds them, these moments make their way through our society. They land on the pages of newspapers and in family albums, appear on billboards and computer screens, hang in museums or on refrigerator doors. There they begin to live a life of their own, as a fact or an omen, as evidence or a warning.
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Promised Land
Groningen through the eyes of 5 photographers
Noorderlicht FotogalerieThe exhibition 'Promised Land' in the Noorderlicht Photo Gallery is the outcome of photography commissions which were distributed under the same title by Noorderlicht in the period 2001-2004. Five internationally famed photographers were asked to record the 'undercurrents' of Groningen, without the aid of tourist brochures or historic guides: that is to say, things which define the character of the city, but are so ordinary that on one notices them any more.
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Tsunami
After the wave
Academie Minerva
Immediately after the tsunami on December 26, 2004 the world was inundated with images. Newspapers and TV stations all over the world flooded into the disaster zone. The pictures were often as dramatic as they were spectacular: people running, trees breaking off like matchsticks, villages scrubbed away, leaving mudflats.
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Hidden Sites
Castle and church sites in the province of Groningen
Landgoed Verhildersum, Leens
Once the province of Groningen had about 200 borgen - castle/farms or fortified manor houses. There are now 16 left. The rest have disappeared, or are only visible as ruins or in relief on the landscape. Many of the church sites in the province have also deteriorated seriously. With them, we are threatened with the loss of a treasure-trove of information, as the graves on these sites are among the oldest in The Netherlands.
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