The festival magazine (Dutch only) contains information on all the exhibitions during Noorderlicht 2005. it is available for 1 euro, and is handed free with the purchase of an admission ticket for the main exhibition.

Four of the shows in the festival are accompanied by photobooks: the main exhibition Traces & Omens, and the commission projects Promised Land, Hidden Sites and Island.

TRACES & OMENS

236 pages, 23 X 23 cm, fullcolour and duotone, hardcover
Price: 35 euro
ISBN: 90-76703-26-4

The catalogue for Traces & Omens contains many images by all the participating photographers and essays by Gerry Badger, Douwe Draaisma and Bas Heijne.

PROMISED LAND

220 pages, 23x23cm, fullcolour and duotone, hardcover
Price: 35 euro
ISBN: 90-76703-22-1

With work by Antoine d'Agata, John Davies, Adrienne van Eekelen, Anders Petersen and Ken Schles.

HIDDEN SITES

80 pages, 17x24cm, fullcolour and duotone, velvet hardcover
Price: 19,50 euro
ISBN 90-76703-24-8 (Dutch edition), 90-76703-23-X (English edition)

With work by Machiel Botman, Andreas Gefeller, Terri Weifenbach and Marco Wiegers

ISLAND

128 pages, 17x24cm, fullcolour, hardcover
Price: 21,50 euro
ISBN 90-76703-25-6

With work by Jehsong Baak, Angelika Barz, Ton Broekhuis, Leo Divendal, John Gossage, Gerco de Ruijter and Jem Southam.

All of these books are available at the main location of the festival, in the Noorderlicht Photogallery, in better bookstores and in the Noorderlicht webshop. The catalogue for Traces & Omens is being distributed by Idea Books, +31 20 622 6154. The other books are distributed by Noorderlicht's own publisher: Stichting Aurora Borealis, +31 50 318 2227.

'Information in visual memory desperately needs to be updated with a certain regularity. You imprint were you locked up your bicycle or parked your car, and that is at the expense of your memories of where you left them the last time. If that old memory was as sharp as the most recent one, it would result in serious confusion; you would spend an enormous amount of time wandering around through the city to all the places where you had ever left your bicycle or car. Our memory apparently throws away old versions, writes over them, or makes them inaccessible. As a consequence, each time only the latest edition is available for consultation. It is easy to see the evolutionary advantage in this. But the same wonderful mechanism also erases the memories of the faces of our loved ones from our memory. What makes photography such a nostalgic medium is that it reminds us of what we can no longer remember.'

(fragment from the essay in Traces & Omens, 'The warmth of recently shot game' by Douwe Draaisma)