Critic and curator John Devos will report on the Breda Photographic Biennial exhibitions over the next few days!
BredaPhoto Biennale picked for its 9th edition Dickens’ “The Best of Times – The Worst of Times” as its theme, but who would have thought that this phrase would become so prophetic? The preparation of the festival during 2019 was business as usual for the organizational team, but then Covid 19 urged the world into a lockdown.
In previous editions BredaPhoto was ambitious & creative; the presentations included every area of the lovely city. Today due to the limited time of preparation they were urged to think ‘smaller’. Smaller, but still it offers 54 projects, 58 artists from 4 continents, 8 locations within walking distance from each other. About half of the expositions are outdoor and accessible without entrance fee, the others are shown in the Former KPN building, Breda’s Museum & the main church, a must-see gothic monument.
As mentioned ‘The Best of Times, the Worst of Times’ refers to Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities, about that turbulent period leading up to the French Revolution and the reign of terror. For the curators the western world is living a similar upheaval where traditional thinking & life is questioned. To illustrate this they propose an international choice of artists with a wide range of approaches & styles, so a visit is more than worthwhile.
In the next editions of the Eye of Photography we will be showing a selection of the projects, but as you know ‘to choose is to lose’. With each theme you also will be able to discover the names of the other artists.
A great big round of applause to Fleur van Muiswinkel (Director), Jan Schaerlackens (Art Director), Reinout van den Bergh (Curator) , Geert van Eyck (Curator), Mohamed Somji (Co Curator), Azu Nwagbogu (Co Curator), Theo Andriessen (Financial Manager), Bix & all other volunteers who made this edition possible.
John Devos
Practical information
- until October 25
- https://www.bredaphoto.nl/ (site in English & Dutch)
- Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Only for the Breda Museum a time slot has to be reserved in advance, for all other interior locations the number of visitors is limited according to quotas.
- If you are visiting for more than one day:
- we recommend combining the open-air expositions (Chassépark / Promenade XXL / Club Solo / Stadsgalerij / Galerie 3sec) on one day;
- and on the other the paying locations (the KPN building / the Great Church / Breda Museum)
- BredaPhoto proposes interesting program of talks, discussions & other live events from https://www.bredaphoto.nl/digital/live/
