Points on the Map – The Representation of Conflict in Cultural Space is a group exhibition curated by Bas Vroege. The exhibition is part of the Beijing Photo Biennial 2013, organised by the art museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFAM).

Points on the Map deals with the changing geopolitical landscape in the 21st century and the ways in which political conflicts are being represented by photographers, filmmakers and artists.

Looking outwards, into the world, has been a characteristic of western societies and the photographers and filmmakers that were part of it. Chinese foreign politics however, can be characterised by an attitude of non-interference. This situation is expected not to exist much longer: Chinese investments in other parts of the world are getting too big to be neglected when instability of whatever nature threatens the continuity of the economic interests. This will mark the inevitable start of making dirty hands abroad for the new super power, just as the west has done for centuries. It implies a major geopolitical landslide for the world as a whole.

The aim of Points on the Map is to show what kind of models and practices documentary photographers and filmmakers have developed in recent years regarding conflicts in other (and in some cases their own) parts of the world. In this framework four regions will receive special attention: Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, Latin-America and the Caucasus.

But the projects that are part of Points on the Map have also been chosen for other reasons. They are examples of a documentary practice that is geared at alternative platforms, including independent, cultural environments and no longer at mass media, which have lost their appeal.

Authors

Robert Knoth (Rotterdam, 1963) is an internationally renowned documentary photographer. His work has been published in newspapers and magazines worldwide. His clients include The Guardian (UK); NRC Handelsblad (NL), New York Times (USA) and Greenpeace.

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Antoinette de Jong (Tilburg, 1964) is a writer, photographer and broadcaster, based in the Netherlands. Her work includes in depth reporting and documentaries for VPRO and Radio Netherlands World Service and the BBC World Service.She has worked in many conflict areas including Somalia, Iraq, Former Yugoslavia, and has covered developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan for almost two decades.

Tim Hetherington’s mission to create a better understanding of the world cast him in many roles: photojournalist, filmmaker, human rights advocate, artist and a leading thinker in media innovation. Working and living in Africa for many years he explored the consequences of conflict and quickly came to document conflict itself before delving deeper to understand the origins and causes of violence. This and other work took him around the world, including a year-long study of American fighting forces in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2008 and ultimately to Libya where he was killed in a mortar attack in April 2011.

Tim’s output ranged from magazine photo essays, documentary films, art installations, multimedia exhibitions and investigative work for Human Rights Watch and the United Nations.

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In October 2010, Simon Norfolk began a series of new photographs in Afghanistan, which takes its cue from the work of nineteenth-century British photographer John Burke. Norfolk’s photographs reimagine or respond to Burke’s Afghan war scenes in the context of the contemporary conflict. Conceived as a collaborative project with Burke across time, this new body of work is presented alongside Burke’s original portfolios.

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Ad Nuis (b. 1958) graduated from the School for Photography in The Hague in 1985. He has been working as an independent photographer ever since. His photos regularly appear in newspapers and magazines, e.g. De Volkskrant, NRC, Parool, VPRO, Vrij Nederland, Communicatie and Management Scope. In addition Nuis works on long-term projects that usually result in a publication or artist book. In the 1990s he published Alweer een Dag, De Dam, Bomenboek, 65+, De Aftrap amongst others. Around the year 2000 he switched from black-and-white photography to digital colour photography. Recent projects include De Bovenste Verdieping, Nieuwe Amsterdammers, Koningshoef. Currently Nuis has a biweekly column in NRC Handelsblad, titled ‘Returning to the past for a moment’. In recent years Nuis has been writing more and more texts guiding his photography. This also went for his long term (former) collaboration with Vrij Nederland, ‘Nuis NL’ and its successor: Nuis.BE for De Standaard (BE).


Since 2015 Ad Nuis had exhibitions at the Beijing Photo Biennial, the Nederlands Fotomuseum (Rotterdam), ImageSingulieres (Sete, FR), MAST (Bologna, IT), Naarden Fotofestival, Noorderlicht (Groningen), Gdansk (PL).

Anatasia Khoroshilova was born in Moscow in 1978. She studied photography at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Folkwang School), Germany with Prof. Joerg Sasse from 1999-2004. Since  2007 she lives and works in Berlin and Moscow.

Among the books published by Khoroshilova are: Russkie (EIKON/ÖIP, Vienna, 2008), The Narrow Circle (Contrasto, Rome, 2008), Five Stories (Paradox, Edam, 2007), Islanders 2003-2006 (Centro per l´arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato / Kunsthalle Lingen, 2006),Notes On The Way (The State Russian Museum / Ludwig Museum in Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, 2006) and Bezhin Meadow (Edit. Trefoil, 2005 Moscow).

Khoroshilova had numerous groups exhibitions as well as solo shows. In the framework of the IPRN project Changing Faces, she was invited in 2007 by the Master's in Photographic Studies of the University Leiden and Paradox to do a commission dealing with work.

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Seda Muradyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia and has a degree in television journalism from Yerevan State Pedagogical University and a master’s degree in journalism from the Caucasus Institute based in Armenia.

Currently Seda heads the Armenian branch of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Public Journalism Club NGO and Media Center Club.

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Dirk-Jan Visser (b. 1978) is a independent documentary photographer based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He works freelance for different media, focusing on social, economic and political issues around the world. In 2005 he photographed the people of Kosovo on the brink of transformation, which resulted in the book Brave New Kosovo. He won a number of awards for his photobookZimbabwe Exodus, including Dutch Photojournalist of the Year 2007 and a special recognition in the POYi World Understanding Award . The Human Rights Watch lobby used the book to help bring about a change of asylum policy in South Africa towards Zimbabweans. In 2009 he participated in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass. Visser is represented by Hollandse Hoogte.

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Arthur Huizinga (b. 1980) is a freelance journalist and writer living in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Since 2008 he has been a regular guest at FK Qarabağ Ağdam, researching it’s remarkable story and general refugee-issues in the South Caucasus, which led to several publication in among others De Groene Amsterdammer, NRC Handelsblad andNRC Next. When the team played FC Twente in August 2009, he was involved in different radio and television performances. In 2012 he published a non-fiction novel on FK Qarabağ Ağdam.

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Ad van DenderenAd van Denderen (1943, The Netherlands) has worked as a photographer for Vrij NederlandStern, 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). Ad van Denderen is a member of VU agency, Paris.

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Nir Evron was born in 1974 in Herzliya. He is an M.F.A. graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and holds a B.F.A. from the Bezalel Academy for Art and Design, Jerusalem. Nir Evron works in photography, video and film, exploring the layers of history present in everyday objects, landscapes, language, and architecture. He often studies historical documentation and rebuilds them using film, sound, photography and text.

They never look you in the eye, the protagonists in Juul Hondius’ (1970, Ens) photos. They stare, they gaze, their motionless glance focused on something that escapes you. Hondius’ models are conscious fellow players in a game that the photographer is playing with them. His photos are not about the people in the image. Hondius enquires of the beholder not what or whom the photo is portraying, but how the beholder takes it in. Both his theoretical approach to photography as a medium and his preoccupation with the viewer’s moment of realisation with regard to the image practically force Hondius the photographer to disappear from the photo that he has so carefully staged.

Catalan by birth, Miquel Dewever-Plana chose to devote his life to the fight for indigenous rights after studying photojournalism in Paris.

Travelling through Mexico and Guatemala between 1995 and 2000, he committed his time to studying the thirty Mayan peoples. The 170 colour photographs in his first book, “Mayas” (CLD Editions) are a precious testimony of an ancient lifestyle undergoing change. In 2012, with the French journalist Isabelle Fougere, he directed the web-documentary "Alma, A Tale of Violence", produced by Arte, Upian and Agence VU (alma.arte.tv) and awarded with several prizes including the 1st Prize for Web-documentaries for World Press Photo 2013.

Isabelle Fougère has been working as a journalist and author since 1991. Her stories on human rights and economic development are regularly published.

Kadir van LohuizenKadir van Lohuizen (NL, b. 1963) has covered conflicts in Africa and elsewhere, but is probably best known for his long-term projects on the seven rivers of the world, the rising of sea levels, the diamond industry and migration in the Americas. He has received numerous prizes, including two World Press Photo awards. In September 2007, he and ten others established the NOOR agency (Amsterdam, New York). He became a member of the supervisory board of World Press Photo in 2008. He has published several photobooks, including Diamond Matters, Aderen and Vía PanAm (in collaboration with Paradox).

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Platforms

Alma: A Tale of Violence (Photo from iPad app)
Alma: A Tale of Violence (Photo from iPad app)
© Miquel Dewever-Playa & Isabele Fougere
Multiscreen installation Poppy - Trails of Afghan Heroin
Multiscreen installation Poppy - Trails of Afghan Heroin
© Robert Knoth & Antoinette de Jong
Still from Oriental Arch
Still from Oriental Arch
© Nir Evron
Still from Sleeping Soldiers, a three screen video installation
Still from Sleeping Soldiers, a three screen video installation
© Tim Hetherington
Brilliant Punitive Raids
Brilliant Punitive Raids
© Juul Hondius
Still from the documentary film From Home to Home
Still from the documentary film From Home to Home
© Seda Muradyan
Photographs from the War in Afghanistan
Photographs from the War in Afghanistan
© Burke + Norfolk
Still from Oil and Paradise, two screen installation
Still from Oil and Paradise, two screen installation
© Ad Nuis
Print from the series Building for the Future: Baladia / Rawabi
Print from the series Building for the Future: Baladia / Rawabi
© Ad van Denderen
Via PanAm iPad app
Via PanAm iPad app
© Kadir van Lohuizen
Training of the 15/16 age group of Lernayin Artsakh (Karabakh Stepanakert) inside the Stepanakert stadium. From the series: Offside - Football in Exile
Training of the 15/16 age group of Lernayin Artsakh (Karabakh Stepanakert) inside the Stepanakert stadium. From the series: Offside - Football in Exile
© Dirk-Jan Visser
Exhibition Points on the Map, 2013.
Exhibition Points on the Map, 2013.
© Thomas Vroege
Three screen video installation 'Sleeping Soldiers' by Tim Hetherington
Three screen video installation 'Sleeping Soldiers' by Tim Hetherington
© Thomas Vroege
Exhibition overview Points on a Map, 2013.
Exhibition overview Points on a Map, 2013.
© Thomas Vroege
Exhibition overview Points on the Map, 2013.
Exhibition overview Points on the Map, 2013.
Exhibition overview Points on the Map, 2013.
Exhibition overview Points on the Map, 2013.
© Thomas Vroege
Installation Out of Context by Anastasia Khoroshilova.
Installation Out of Context by Anastasia Khoroshilova.
© Thomas Vroege
Ad van Denderen, Building for the Future: Baladia / Rawabi.
Ad van Denderen, Building for the Future: Baladia / Rawabi.
© Thomas Vroege
Exhibition Points on the Map, 2013.
Exhibition Points on the Map, 2013.
© Thomas Vroege
Exhibition Points on the Map, 2013.
Exhibition Points on the Map, 2013.
© Thomas Vroege
Exhibition Points on the Map, 2013.
Exhibition Points on the Map, 2013.
© Thomas Vroege
Opening Beijing Photo Biennial 2013
Opening Beijing Photo Biennial 2013
© Bas Vroege
Opening ceremony at the China Millenium Monument, Beijing Photo Biennial 2013
Opening ceremony at the China Millenium Monument, Beijing Photo Biennial 2013
© Arthur Huizinga

Exhibition

Points on the Map was developed especially for the Beijing Photo Biennial 2013, organised by the art museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFAM). Bas Vroege, director of Paradox, curated the group exhibition including works of:

  • Robert Knoth & Antoinette de Jong, Poppy – Trails of Afghan Heroin (4 screen video installation)
  • Tim Hetherington, Sleeping Soldiers (3 screen video installation)
  • Simon Burke, Burke + Norfolk: Photographs from the War in Afghanistan (prints)
  • Ad Nuis, Oil and Paradise (2 screen video installation)
  • Anastasia Khoroshilova, Out of Context (prints)
  • Seda Muradyan, From Home to Home (documentary video)
  • Dirk-Jan Visser & Arthur Huizinga, Offside – Football in Exile (prints, video)
  • Ad van Denderen, Building for the Future: Baladia / Rawabi (prints)
  • Nir Evron, Oriental Arch (video)
  • Juul Hondius, Brilliant Punitive Raids (video, prints)
  • Miquel Dewever-Playa & Isabele Fougere, Alma: A Tale of Violence (iPad app)
  • Kadir van Lohuizen, Via PanAm (iPad app)

It is a multiplatform exhibition, including photographic prints, audiovisual installations and apps. Remarkable is the mix of still and moving images, text and sound as well as the chosen platforms: internet, iPad or installations, all of which allow multimedia.

 

  • 24.10.201308.12.2013Beijing Photo Biennial, Beijing World Art Museum

  • Group show with various works of 12 artists: multimedia screens, prints, iPads and tvs.

In the media

  • China Daily

    The first Beijing Photo Biennial

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