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On the Wolga

This video was made on the occasion of the boat trip on the Wolga river in May (2017). The travelguide was Alexander Münninghoff.  Münninghoff attended Gymnasium Haganum. He studied Slavic language and literature at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam. At the time, he worked for the MID as a Russian instructor. As a journalist he was a Moscow correspondent for the Haagsche Courant between 1986 and 1991. For the same newspaper he was a war correspondent in Cambodia and El Salvador. He also covered the First Gulf War between Iran and Iraq. In 2014 he published the eventful history of his family under the title De Stamhouder. A family chronicle. He received the Libris History Prize for that book on 25 October 2015. He presented various programs on television. Münninghoff lived for years in the Statenkwartier in The Hague, where he died on April 28 at the age of 76.

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This video, a collaborative work with Brian was made on the occasion of Bospop Photo presentation on the festival terrain. A music festival where I created an exhibition on his Photography.  Brian Griffin is one of Britain’s most influential portrait photographers. He achieved early recognition in the 1970s and 1980s, inventing a new photographic style known as Capitalist Realism. Capturing the different workers of society, his photographs transform workplaces into stages and his subjects into actors.

Born in Birmingham, Griffin began a career in engineering aged 16, before enrolling to study photography at Manchester Polytechnic at 21. His first solo show was mounted in London in 1981, followed by solo shows in Europe, Asia and the USA. Griffin has published twenty books and in 1991, he was awarded the ‘Best Photography Book in the World’ prize at Barcelona Primavera Fotografica. Brian Griffin’s photographs are held in the permanent collections of major art institutions including the Arts Council, British Council, Victoria & Albert Museum and National Portrait Gallery, London. 

He died in 2024 at the age of 76.

Work commissioned by the Gouvernement Limburg, Maastricht.

The general impression of the Limburg landscape is one of romanticism, characterised by half-timbered houses, orchards and rolling hills. This is only a small part of Limburg. This image has been generalised and branded for tourism purposes. As such, redefining it was an option for me in the assignment. 

The exhibition ‘Kind, mijn Kind’ (Child my Child) questions the human capacity for being a perpetrator or a victim. In different contexts people are capable of filling either role.

In their work the participating artists address a number of paradoxes. Seeming contradictions. The paradoxes of power and powerlessness, of victims and perpetrators. In different situations people will experience the degree to which they are powerful or powerless, are victim or possibly even perpetrator. In the exhibition the aforementioned paradoxes are expressed in photographs by Theo Derksen and paintings by Jos Wigman.

Through projected photographs and paintings we see how the images of victim and perpetrator fade into each other. These morphing images, are accompanied by a penetrating music composed by musician/composer Ernst Jansz.

The history of the Gesamtkunstwerk Child my Child and the question-raising paradoxes are extensively discussed in the essay The Fine Print.

HANGZHOU PROJECT