‘t Zoet was a former industrial site of a sugar refinery, for this edition it became BredaPhoto’s outdoor festival site. A total of 16 projects are presented there, about a third of the total. Walking onto the site, you see the outline of a Gasholder.
Because of its size and arrangement, the gasholder shows the most important exhibition of this site – the images of Omar Victor Diop (1980) from the series Diaspora 2013-2015 (images 3-6). In Diaspora, Diop recreates portraits of Africans who travelled to the Western world between the 15th and 19th centuries, and were immortalised there through painting or photography. The artist, too, had travelled to the West, was received kindly but at the same time treated condescendingly.
Among those portrayed is Dom Miguel de Castro, Emissary of Congo c 1643, a story that fits the theme and Renno’s installation in the Grote Kerk perfectly. The West India Company had opened a trading post for slaves on the African coast. Slaves destined for the sugar (!) refineries under Dutch control in Brazil, and dom Miguel was sent out by the Congolese rulers as envoy to Brazil and the Netherlands. It was there that he was portrayed.
Diop assumes the identity of these Africans, but he also slyly smuggles a contemporary element into the picture. A red card, a football, football shoes, goalkeeper gloves… Those additions all represent the new contemporary travellers, Africans who are attracted as new heroes by Western football teams, while Africa and the Africans in general are ignored. The inequality of the 15th century is just as relevant today, it persists.
Iranian Canadian documentary photographer Parisa Azadi (b 1984) was nominated last year ‘One to Watch’ by the British Journal of Photography . In Breda, she presents Safar, a Farsi expression that can be translated as ‘Journey’ ( right within the theme) (images 7-9). She documents a new phenomenon in Iran – to circumvent strict religious laws, a lot of Iranians trek in nature. Their love of nature is authentic, but at the same time has the advantage of allowing them to evade the crushing restrictions enforced by the Morality Police, “The Guidance Patrol”. A look at freedom-seeking people in Iran.
Aimilia A. Theofilopoulos 1993 The title of her project Die Wand is nicht Tragend (images 10-11) contains a personal and emotional observation about online dating. Her work is primarily autobiographical, a search for identity, through themes such as mental health, gender studies, love, and the social plights constructed around these themes. The project highlights traditional relationship structures and questions them.
For Santanu Dey 1991, photography is a means of uncovering the hidden history of a region. Such is the case in Brackish Tears (images 12-13). The creation of the states of India & Pakistan in 1947 also saw huge waves of refugees. Hindus fleeing from what later became Bangladesh were herded together in inhospitable areas. In 1978, when the government wanted to ‘settle’ the situation by force, the police resorted to violence, which is known today as the Marichjhapi massacre.
To tell the story, Dey uses images from the Mahabharata epic in which kings turn against the people. He argues that the history of his region foreshadows the large-scale migration and universal refugee crisis.
Anna Gajewszky has links with two villages in Transylvania that are steeped in an oral tradition of standards, values, stories and memories. They represent a guideline, but also a base to which the current generation is adding its own stories and moral standards. When Gajewszky began to follow her own path, she thought she was far removed from tradition, but she increasingly realised that she nonetheless had very strong links with family conventions and customs. Mother don’t you cry (images 14-15) consists of self-portraits to which she adds fiction and reality to transcend the personal story. Family ties, rural traditions, death, trauma, femininity and identity are at the heart of her narrative.
Mounir Raji (1982) He who emigrates leaves a piece of self behind in his homeland. There is always an empty space: a space that must be filled during the summer holiday. During those weeks, the children of migrants are exposed to the best parts of their homeland, they are suddenly surrounded by family members on a daily basis and get to see the loveliest places. Their homeland begins to resemble an ideal world.
This also applies to Mounir Raji as summer holidays spent in Morocco were like a dream. It was something he looked forward to all year. So how could it be that his family in Morocco dreamed of a life in the Netherlands? He went looking for this Dreamland (images 16-18), searching for what he was missing in the Netherlands, and met people who looked like him.
And finally he found his Eden, it is about the sense of warmth and safety you have when you are reunited with family, the elated feeling of being able to endlessly play outdoors, the sensations of colours and landscapes and the blazing sun on your face. But it is also about the deeper feeling of trust, freedom and hope.
“Ukrainian. Photographies X BredaPhoto: Altered sites in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine” explores the transformation of landscapes and intimate spaces that bear witness to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It delves into how war alters perceptions, purposes, and the very essence of familiar environments, featuring recent work by three Ukrainian artists. The projects explore how personal memory and environmental devastation are interconnected.
Yana Kononova’s project Radiations of War (images 19-20) revolves around landscapes undergoing transformation, much like the narrative itself transitions from an obligation to bear witness to outrageous war horrors to an eco-poetic exploration of disaster zones.
Technical warfare is the most unprecedented and egregious depredation. Poetess Joyelle McSweeney introduced the concept of the Necropastoral as a political-aesthetic zone where mankind’s depredations cannot be divorced from an experience of poisoned and aberrant nature. Drawing from this sombre source, in Radiations of War, the political potential of devastated, looted, war-torn landscapes – the areas of decomposition, contamination, and decay – lies in challenging common notions of justice and retribution in emitting their own tainted brilliance. It is about making the fact of their devastation spectacularly and unequivocally visible.
Altered Sites also shows images of the artists Katya Lesiv & Sergii Polezhaka,
‘Take me to the river’ is the collection title for 5 projects curated by Munem Wasif and presented by Oxfam Novib X Pathshala South Asian Media Institute X BredaPhoto. It showcases the work of 5 photographers, 3 from Bangladesh and 2 from Nepal who each tell their stories about the people around the major rivers in the Ganges, Brahmaputra & Meghna basin. These communities live and learn through the rivers, enjoy the benefits, but also have to increasingly reckon with climate change.
Initially, Hadi Uddin 1983 learned the basics of photography in his father’s studio. He started an MA, but finally returned on the sly to his original love: making images. Trained in Bangladesh and in Denmark. Take me to the River by Uddin zooms out to show the bigger picture of river life and zooms in on the silent witnesses of beauty and destruction.
The other artists involved are: Fariha Hossain, Kishor Sharma, Amit Machamasi, Mohammad Ashraful Huda
’t Zoet, Markkade, Breda
Tuesday – Sunday: 10:00 to 17:00 hours
This location is divided: Stadpark ’t Zoet is accessible freely, to access ’t Zoet EXPO a festival ticket is needed
Information point & ticket office. Café, Toilets
Bicycles can be parked, cars can be stalled at the De Prins indoor parking lot . The location is wheelchair accessible, but please note: the terrain contains uneven surfaces and loose sand.
John Devos
[email protected]
