The text below was published in the catalog 'Home, Somewhere'.

'Home, Somewhere' is the diary of an imaginary trip through an imaginary city. It's put together from the contributions of the photographers participating in 'Home', the main exhibition of the Noorderlicht Photofestival 1993, to which a choice is added from work by other photographers exhibiting during the festival.

The impetus for 'Home' was given on the one hand by recent historical phenomena like the unification of Western Europe and the opening up as well as new division of Eastern Europe, on the other hand by the recent trend among photographers to use family and friends as subject matter. But these time and place bound social phenomena are the background and not the subject or explanation for this book.

The real subject is the emotional value of this word 'Home', the universal need for warmth and safety, the essential longing for rooting in a community. Using these meanings of Home as a lead offers a context for the presentation of work stemming from wide-ranging classical photographic genres (landscape, portrait, reportage, assemblage) and points at parallels between photographic oevres which usually go unnoticed. These parallels can be described in terms of warmth, intimacy and personal attachment. They offer connections between genres, leaving aside the location of the photographers' subject which might either be found in the actual home, in the city of region with which he or she holds a special relationship, in the abstract idea of home or in everyday life. Within the exhibition 'Home' the theme functions as a mill, from which work from a diverse background is hung: landscape and still-life, portrait and cityscape, reportage, assemblage, interiors and family-pictures. Those who want to draw lines between between the contributions may find a possible key in the relationship of the photographer to the theme as it expresses itself through the location of the subject in his or her images. This would lead to four 'groupings'.

In the first group 'Home' has its most literal meaning: the images are made at home, sometimes in that of the photographer, sometimes in that of friends or relatives. In the second group 'Home' takes on a wider and less 'homely' meaning and refers to a town, city or region. More often than not in these cases the subject will be the (previous) residence or place of birth of the photographer, sometimes it is a place with which he or she has a special personal relationship. In the third group an actual and factual home no longer exists and the concept is visualised in a more indirect and symbolical way.

More so than in the previous two documentary groups in this case the relationship of the images with the theme is a matter of interpretation. The work has a very personal edge and 'Home' either is the explicitly stated inspiration or is the goal of the photographers' exploits. Within the fourth and last group the subject is decisive for the relationship with the theme. The basis of the work in this group is what may best be described as 'the quality of life'. The images are made around social and political issues that are of major impact on the photographers' experience of 'Home' (and therefore on the experience of the photographed subjects as well as on the viewers).

The photographs in this book can be ordered within the above groups but they are not presented that way. Presenting groups would do less than justice to the essential character of the exhibition and to the emotional and visual parallels between the contributions in this book.

In this book images of people, houses and streets are put together to tell not only their own story but also a combined one. Together they make up a 'story' about an imaginary Home. This book is a personal picture-album - the pictures are personal momentoes of Home, of a place somewhere physically present yet for its essential meanings depending on the emotions it stirs up.

It is at this point that the exhibition and the book touch upon eachother: what unites both is the universal human need for community and security, for safety and warmth.

Eddie Marsman, Groningen, 1993