Right Here, Right Now!
Living in the moment
What we do when we are faced with breathtaking beauty? Do we capture it or enjoy the moment? What keeps us in our experience if we are just busy trying to take photos? Are the innumerable photographic images not just causing us to just forget faster?
Bridges or walls
Do we continue muddling through or do we make serious attempts to give each other a better future? Do we let refugees perish or do we bring them inside? Are you a bridge builder or do you hide behind the dikes? Do you build a wall around your family, your friends or yourself to protect against evil and thus ensure a good future for yourself?
Dare to be different
Who are the heroes who dare to stand out from the crowd? Is there a hero in you? If you do something that others do not dare to do, are you reckless or visionary?
Déja-vu
Hasn’t everything already been recorded? We can now take and share more pictures in a week than were taken throughout the entirety of the analog era. Fortunately, there are photographers and artists who are still able to distinguish themselves and manage to surprise us with a new perspective on an old concept.
Crying for the moon
What do you dream of and what do you do to make your dream come true? How do you shape your future in a world that changes daily? How do people handle their setbacks and how do they fight for their happiness? “Be careful what you wish for … it just might happen.”
Unlike any other medium, photography can depict stories that engage us, make us happy or frightened, and can make us realize how important the present is in our daily lives and for our future. In short: Right Here, Right Now
Maikel Samuels – Father Christoforos
Location: Stadhuiszolder
After graduating from the Fotovakschool in 2003, Maikel Samuels started a career as a professional photographer. He works for Trouw and has been published in De Volkskrant, the Financial Dagblad, HUMO and Aftenposten, among others. In addition to his work on assignment, he makes his own photo stories on social and community issues. He tries to show big stories, close to the people.
Father Christoforos (36, Sacramento, USA) is a young, charismatic Orthodox priest and site coordinator at the refugee assembly point Skala Sikaminias in Lesbos, Greece. After living on the island for fourteen years, he returned last summer with his family to visit friends. Struck by the scale and tragedy of the refugee crisis, he decided to stay long term to help. Although the majority of the refugees are Muslim, they respect the Father as a spiritual leader. With his knowledge of the Greek culture, language and local network, Father Christoforos is a key person in organizing help for the boat refugees.
Carla Kogelman – Casa Bak
Location: Stadhuiszolder
Carla Kogelman has been working in the theater world for more than 25 years and she finished her studies at the Fotoacademie in Amsterdam at the end of 2011, specializing in reportage, documentary and portraiture. Her black and white portraits are an illustration of daily life and involve growing up, emotion and how people approach life. She has won several prizes including the Zilveren Camera 2011 (series art, culture and entertainment), the PANL #21 Awards (one time Gold and twice Silver) and the SO2013 Awards.
In Naarden she shows a series about the stray dog problem in Curacao. While the government is doing nothing about the problem, the citizens are taking action. For example, Mirjam and Gerard have set up a house (Casa Bak) for dogs that are sick, disabled or too old to live on the street.
Kiki Groot – Sleutels zonder huis
Location: Stadhuiszolder
Kiki Groot graduated in 2015 from the Fotoacademie in Amsterdam. She is a documentary and portrait photographer and is always looking for the individual. What is it that separates the one from the other? What influence do these factors have on the identity and the life of the people who she photographs? She focuses on long-term projects.
What do you take with you if you are fleeing from Syria? The exterior of these young boys reveals little. These could just as easily be ‘our’ guys, having grown up in our Dutch society. The still lifes of the stuff that they took with them during their flight from Syria, however, tell us a piece of their real story. All are boys with dreams and ambitions that they want to pursue in the Netherlands.
Tara Fallaux – Love Letters
Location: Stadhuiszolder
“Photography and film give me an opportunity draw my inspiration from the mysteries of everyday encounters. I am always interested in people’s vitality and fate, how we shape the world around us, and vice versa. The stories I tell through my photographs or films don’t provide answers to these questions. Hopefully, they act as moments of contemplation and recognition.”
Tara Fallaux’s Liefdesbrieven (Love letters) is a photo series and film installation about a nearly vanished medium, the handwritten love letter. The portrayed share one of their most intimate love letters. The subjects are brave and not afraid to express their feelings by putting their love on paper. Writing a love letter demands courage because you have to be willing to be vulnerable. With this project she wants to touch and inspire people through experiencing emotional intimacy that requires attention, peace of mind and most of all courage – love letters.
Charles Fréger – Wilder Mann
Location: De Grote Kerk
Devils, beer people, shamans with antlers: in many European countries monsters and human-animal hybrids turn up. They often come from old pagan rituals related to death and birth, the harvest and the seasons. The French photographer Charles Fréger has been capturing these for a long time: a large selection of his ‘wild men’ can be seen this year in Naarden.
Charles Fréger (1975) travelled through the eighteen European countries looking for old pagan rituals for which the performers dress themselves up as a bear or goat, or as a straw-man or twine-bird, as sheet creatures or harlequins. His work is halfway between an anthropological study and a theater performance. Sometimes the actor is completely hidden from view by his suit; sometimes he seems to pause with a cigarette. But the wild men remain part of a ritual, and that requires a serious and careful implementation.
Marie-José Jongerius – Los Angeles Palms
Location: Grote Kerk
Marie-José Jongerius (1970) studied photography at the Instituto Superiore della Fotografia in Rome (1990–1991), the KABK in The Hague (1992–1996) and the Academy of Art and Design St. Joost in Breda, where she earned her master’s degree. In 1999 she left for Los Angeles to photograph writers, actors and directors. She became fascinated with the scenery of America’s Southwest, a fascination that eventually resulted in the book Edges of the Experiment – The Making of the American Landscape (2015).
In her series Los Angeles Palms, she builds on her studies of California’s landscape. At the time of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1932, thousands of palm trees were planted. These palms are now on average 80 years old, which means that they are now dying. Los Angeles has decided not to replant because they use so much water. Within a few years, Los Angeles will lose its iconic palms.
Reinier Gerritsen – Bank Run
Location: Grote Kerk
Reinier Gerritsen is a documentary photographer with a focus on the individual in urban society. Social, cultural and economic developments are the main starting point for his work, while the public space is his domain. While observing the numerous details of the passersby in the anonymity of the city, he aims to reveal a part of their identity and, simultaneously, address modern society. His images often have a cinematic quality.
Reinier Gerritsen’s latest project is Bank Run. This series touches upon the hidden world of high finance and was shot in the financial centers of London, New York, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong. He managed to catch a glimpse of this world – maybe even its true face.
Dennis Wisse – Zeeland Hardcore Party
Location: The Fence
Dennis Wisse graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague in 2009 specializing in documentary photography. Since then he has been working as a freelance reportage and portrait photographer. He also makes photo and film projects about subcultures, young and marginal figures – such as the Zeeland Hardcore Parties (ZLHC)
Within a period of just three years, the ZLHC Parties have become well known among fans of hardcore, metal and punk music in Zeeland and the surrounding area. The aggression and energy that characterizes Hardcore go together with a strong mutual feeling of brotherhood and solidarity. This apparent contrasting of this unique subculture is the main theme within the documentary photo project Zeeland Hardcore Party.
Jacob Aue Sobol – Road of Bones
Location: Bastion Oranje / Building H / Room 10
The road has an innocent sounding name: the R-504. But behind this businesslike designation lies a sinister reality. The R-504 is also called the “road of bones” because it was built by political prisoners from the gulag. The Danish Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol has captured the life along this road in the series Arrivals and Departures.
The R-504 runs between Jakutsk and Magadan in Siberia. The road is more than 2000 km long, of which 1197 kilometers lies in the Sakha Republic and 835 kilometers in Magadan. The road was constructed to open up Siberia for gold mining. The work was done by forced laborers, large numbers of whom were sent to Siberia beginning in the 1930s. The road owes its name to the many victims who died here; their bones became part of the pavement. It is said that each meter cost a life.
David Chancellor – Safari Club
Location: Bastion Oranje / Building H / Area 4 – 11
David Chancellor is a documentary photographer based in South Africa and the United Kingdom. Chancellor’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in leading galleries and museums and has been published worldwide. His work has received many prizes, including the World Press Photo Award, the Taylor Wessing National Portrait Prize and Pictures of the Year International Award. His monograph Hunters was published in 2012 by Schilt Publishing.
The hunters portrayed in Safari Club (Dallas, Texas, USA) have dedicated most of their lives to the collection of the stuffed animals around them. Their work is often hidden until after their own death, when it is taken over by natural history museums which then exhibit the animals in their collections. Until that time, many of the hunters choose to live with the animals they have hunted.
Arthur Mebius – Dear Sky / North Korean Aviation
Location: Bastion Oranje / Building G / Area 9
Arthur Mebius is playing on home turf here; he is based in Naarden. He is well known as an advertising photographer (for, among others, Volkswagen, KPN, Migros and bol.com), but also makes a lot of non-commercial work. He specializes in ‘one frame stories’, which show the past, the present and the future.
In Naarden one can see his series on Air Koryo, the national airline of North Korea. Due to international sanctions and environmental conditions, the only international destinations of the airline remaining are China and Vladivostok. The old Antonovs, Ilyushins and Tupolevs rarely fly abroad and therefore seem superfluous. However, these aircraft and their crews are ready for use. Arthur Mebius captures the routine work of the crew: a well-rehearsed performance of maintenance, checks and procedures. It’s a beautiful “ground control dance”, which exudes an image of dedication and pride.
Julia Steinigeweg – Ein verwirrendes Potenzial
Location: Bastion Oranje / Building G / Room 10
The German photographer Julia Steinigeweg investigates the relationship between people and dolls. In the series Ein verwirrendes Potenzial, she show what role these dolls can play in the lives of their owner. They are no ordinary inflatable dolls, but very realistic gentlemen and ladies crafted in all desired colors and shapes. The dolls are primarily an antidote for loneliness.
The photos of Julia Steinigeweg create an estranged impression, but also evoke questions about human relationships. Can we create an emotional relationship with dolls without consciousness? Does a relationship always require an exchange of feelings? Or do we ultimately just love ourselves and is the other nothing more than a mirror?
