On 12 December 1935, a programme was started in Germany to provide the Third Reich with a new generation of leaders: Lebensborn (Source of Life). SS officers were encouraged to reproduce as much as possible, including out of wedlock. In several Lebensborn homes scattered across West-Europe, (unmarried) women could give birth if they met the requirements of the Aryan race. After the war, the children from these homes and families were often stigmatised, mistreated, and abused. Many grew up wi...

Panama’s aanwezigheid in het collectieve geheugen blijft vaak beperkt tot het beroemde kanaal, de exotische landschappen en de recente politieke geschiedenis. In In the Heat presenteert Arturo Soto echter een subjectieve verbeelding van Panama’s stedelijke landschap die het conservatieve beeld van economische vooruitgang tegen spreekt. Hoewel het project niet bedoeld is als sociale kritiek, probeert het wel de uiteenlopende sociale waarden en ongelijkheid in Panama’s stedelijke omgeving...

To whom does the city belong?

Haven tells the coming of age story of a boy in a rapidly changing environment. Sem Langendijk (NL) witnessed the unrooting effects of gentrification during his upbringing in the periphery of a large city. He lost his connection to the place he lived in for nearly thirty years.

This body of work is the result of a long-term research project into shifting demographics, waterfront development and the dynamics of gentrification. Haven brings together the environme...

This book proposes a counter-narrative of the city of Oxford, England, that resists the visual imperatives of its venerable university. Over five years, Mexican photographer Arturo Soto explored the long-standing division between the town and its academic history through a careful selection of spaces and objects. His visual narrative is loosely structured around a few themes: notions of home and homelessness, the looming presence of Brexit, the conflicted local economy, and the diversity of t...

A significant part of the work of artistic researcher Martin Tscholl (DE) involves walking through meadows, forests, and mountains. Here, he encounters a web of interconnections that extends far beyond the realm of humans. This web is inhabited by a wide variety of organisms, materials, and processes that are mutually dependent and in permanent change. By actively looking out for these other beings a correspondence between the human and the non-human spheres starts to unfold. In this process...

How can we visualise people’s state of mind in times of confusion and transformation?

Some Way Out of Here by Jos Jansen (NL) explores a new and different way to represent the uncertainty of the era we currently live in. He sought the limits of lens-based image making in a manner that resonates with the fluidity of this theme.

Using a 3D LiDAR camera, known for its ambiguous and mysterious point clouds, he scoured the streets of Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam, capturing people lost in their t...

Peter Pflügler devises an intimate maze into the heart of his family secret. Concealed for 20 years, his father’s suicide attempt was an occurrence he somehow always knew about. Investigating traces of this silenced trauma, he created images that inhabit the brink of comfort and irritation, of love and pain. While rummaging through this unsettling landscape, we are invited to look closer and discover texts and images hidden between the pages. ‘Now Is not the Right Time’ grapples with t...

In 2017, The New York Times revealed that the American ministry of Defence for years had been investing millions of dollars in secret UFO investigations. At that time, the photographer Robert Pufleb (1969, DE) had already recorded numerous mysterious flying saucers for his series TRANSFORMER (2015–2018). He first encountered them in the Chinese megacity Chongqing and since then photographed dozens of UFO’s in China and several European cities. But are we really seeing the vessels of extra...

Photographer Michael Yuan paints an intimate portrait of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, challenging accepted perspectives of the monument, which is most often observed in its mind-blowing entirety and completeness. This is the bridge in all its characteristic faces that have never been presented before, a study of its form, lines, shapes, and familiar colour. The book is a loving tribute to the imposing towers, stylised street lamps, gigantic cables, bolts, and plates, each with the...

In the 17th century, the citizens of Oberammergau made a covenant with God. If he halted the plague, they would reenact The Passion of Christ every ten years for eternity. When the deaths ceased, in 1634, the villagers fulfilled their promise and the first Passion Play was staged. Regine Petersen’s (DE) combination of image and text takes as its starting point Adolf Hitler’s attendance of Oberammergau’s tricentennial Jubilee in 1934. Her narrative unfolds on two levels: that of the worl...