[This project, in an extended version, is scheduled to be exhibited at Lumen Photography Foundation in Budapest, Hungary in the fall of 2010.]
Grozny Memories is about a virtually unseen view of Grozny (the most destroyed city on earth, reports Unesco in 2002). Not since Dresden in early 1945 has a European city been turned into such a ruined state. Many people fled the war zone and took with them memories of a city, that back in Soviet times got praised as the union's greenest city.
Mr. K., a refugee from Grozny, granted Dutch citizenship after waiting nine years, collected anonymous photographs showing a colorful pre-war Grozny on the web. Images of an undamaged Grozny usually live a hidden life, whilst grim and dark black and white photographs taken by photojournalists were often published in news media worldwide. Mr. K. mostly did not want to think nor talk about Grozny anymore and the set of pictures he printed was given to me as a present.
As a monument to a pre-war visual memory of Grozny and a remembrance of the pain and loss people experienced from the Russian-Chechen wars, I made blow-ups from the low resolution images and juxtaposed them with quotes loosely translated from the Dutch version of Petra Procházková's book of interviews (Survival in Grozny, 2003) with women from Grozny.
5 large prints (112 x 162 cm) have been on view at the Noorderlicht Photofestival, Groningen, September 6 - October 4, 2009.
Hans Gremmen did the typesetting for the prints
Bas Vroege, one of the six curators, included my work in his selection called Multivocal Histories -- also showing projects by Andrea Stultiens, Wouter den Bakker, Ales Vasicek, Vojta Dukát, Anastasia Khoroshilova, Jiang Jian, Tim Hetherington, Florian Schwarz, Julian Germain, and Susan Meiselas.
Part of De Volkskrant review by Merel Bem in English (my translation):
"This new generation of engaged photographers, according to Bas Vroege, starts with projects from the early 1990s by Julian Germain and Susan Meiselas, and is 'sampling' itself through histories. Which sounds nice, but also somewhat superficial. However, it is not the case that photographers like Wouter den Bakker, Andrea Stultiens, and Taco Hidde Bakker (all from The Netherlands), and the Chech Ales Vasicek, get their information randomly and take it out of context in order to use the material rootless in their works. It isn't.
Taco Hidde Bakker combined quotes by people who fled the destructed town of Grozny with idyllic, internet-found, and enlarged postcards, representing what used to be the greenest city of the late Soviet-Union. Two elements, both torn out of their original context, evoke an image of Grozny, that, at least equals, if not surpasses, a 'literal' photo-reportage. At any rate, it is a way of dealing with history that will appeal to younger audiences in a straighter way."
Read the entire review by De Volkskrant on Noorderlicht here (Dutch only)
