The archive of Dutch photographer Ad van Denderen on Israel and Palestine spans the years 1993 to 2016. What began as a journalistic assignment gradually evolved into a long-term documentary project. Over more than two decades, Van Denderen witnessed the transformation of a landscape marked by illegal settlements, the First and Second Intifada, checkpoints, walls, and the gradual reshaping of territory and everyday life.
Moving between Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, he photographed and spoke to people on all sides: families, workers, settlers, soldiers and political leaders —including Hamas in their early days. His photos offer a unique, personal view on a conflict too often reduced to headlines.
The archive begins in 1993, the year of the Oslo Accords. The agreement embodied hope; coexistence seemed within reach, and a civil society began to take shape. More than twenty years later, Van Denderen’s work reveals a territory fractured by walls, checkpoints, and deepening divisions. Meaningful encountersbetween Israelis and Palestinians—from everyday exchanges to political negotiations—appear increasingly absent.
In 2016, he drew a line. Witnessing the conflict unfold had become too painful. Years later, when his eldest son suggested returning to the place in Israel where he had been born in 1964, Van Denderen declined.
Fractured – Palestine 1993-2016 explores what remains after the decades of conflict Van Denderen documented: landscapes, borders, communities, memories, and the hopes once invested in the future. Many of those hopes have since been shattered by a brutal reality—along with the belief that human rights and international law would help protect them.
Authors
Ad van Denderen (1943, The Netherlands) has worked as a photographer for Vrij Nederland, Stern, NRC Handelsblad, GEO and The Independent magazine, among others. He has received a number of prestigious prizes for his work, including the Visa d’Or at the international photo festival Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan in 2001 and The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts’ (Fonds BKVB) oeuvre prize in 2007/2008. Go No Go, his book on migration in Europe, based on 13 years of work, was published by Actes Sud, Mets & Schilt, Lunwerg Editores, Edition Braus and Paradox in 2003. For the 2008 SteidlMack/Paradox publication So Blue So Blue, Van Denderen photographed the 17 countries around the Mediterranean Sea. Earlier publications include Peace in The Holy Land, a book about Palestine (1997) andWelkom in Suid-Afrika, about apartheid (1991). The latter title would see an update in Welkom Today, a collaborative project with South-African photographer Lebohang Tlali and writer Margalith Kleijwegt in 2019 (Paradox & Atlas Contact). The Nederlands Fotomuseum made a large retrospective about his work in 2023 under the title On the Road, accompanied by a major catalogue. En Route was the title for the 2024 interpretation of Van Denderen's oeuvre by Visa pour l'Image.
website
Fractured
Fractured – Palestine 1993-2016 is a 5 channel video installation with soundscape. Its size is highly flexible: it can fill a large space when projected making use of 5 separate projectors connected to BrightSign media players. For smaller venues the use of a single hi-res projector may suffice. But it may also be shown on monitors mounted on the wall or standing on a plinth or table depending on the space and budget available.