I wake up encapsulated by darkness; the sea has pulled me in so deep that life on the surface feels like a dream. I’m completely alone; everyone I hold love for, whose presence I touched, all my life’s passersby seem unreal to me now. As if I were never there, as if I were a consciousness only, hovering above, loving them desperately while they couldn't see me. I keep pushing and struggling to ...

I have come to distrust memory. Not because it disappears, but because it rearranges itself until what was lived becomes impossible to recover. Looking back at these photographs, I cannot tell whether they preserve a period of my life or whether they have gradually replaced it. Every return rearranges them, and me, a little differently. That uncertainty always leads me back to the same house. In ...

A conversation on the ways images act and condition our perception of reality Images that circulate widely on social media play a decisive role in shaping how social and political realities are produced, perceived, and contested. Far from being neutral, these images contribute to the formation of cultural and territorial identities, reinforcing dominant narratives while also holding the ...

The rapid expansion of digital visuality continues to redefine our everyday lives, challenging our ability to separate conventional reality from an increasingly synthetic landscape. “Front End” addresses this contemporary dilemma, functioning as a conceptual training ground that prompts a more conscious reception of the digital images that flood our screens and shape our perception. A ...

Although originating in South America, the potato is, peculiarly, deeply intertwined with German identity. Inconspicuous, misshapen, and persistently underestimated, “Solanum tuberosum” captured my fascination precisely because of these humble, unpretentious qualities. Driven by this curiosity, I embarked on an immersive, year-long photographic research project dedicated to the humble tuber: ...

Get to know the artists behind the Der Greif “Quiet Hours” online exhibition confronting loss, memory, and healing after dark Der Greif presents the launch of the online exhibition, “Quiet Hours: Nighttime and Grief”, timed in honor of National Grief Awareness Day. When the sun sets and daily noise fades, quiet hours amplify our deepest reflections. This curated collection brings together twelve ...

The quiet hours of nighttime create a poetic space lit only by artificial streetlights, soft twilight, or absolute darkness amplifying our deepest reflections. In honor of National Grief Awareness day "Quiet Hours: Nighttime & Grief" assemble twelve artists who use the canvas of nighttime to process loss, transition, and emotional survival. Grief manifests in infinite ways. Across these diverse ...

The latest photobook picks by Der Greif “In Focus” is Der Greif’s photobook review series, spotlighting our picks from the current open call for submissions and our community artists' publications. This month, the focus is on “Someday I will lose you” by Minh-An Pham and “My Mother’s Tender Script” by Asiya Al. Sharabi. Both artists turn to ordinary evidence to explore maternal bonds and ...

“Keikai keiho! Kaiho da!” My Korean grandmother was born in Japan during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea. She would occasionally talk in her sleep in Japanese. These words occasionally surfaced in my grandmother's sleep, articulated with the precision of someone wide awake. Only recently, after coming across my grandparents’ atomic bomb victim registration certificates, did I ...

Tell me exactly what this room smelled like to you – oil, incense, candles? Cigarettes? Like gasoline in your nose and a scented candle. And the way the strangers' bodies smelled. That was the most terrifying part for me… the rest was rather pleasant. There was the taste of fresh fruit, the smell of the sea, Mother Nature, which is destructive in itself. My heroine... capable of giving so much ...

Every photograph begins with reality, yet reality is never limited to what reveals itself at first glance. It is shaped not only by what is visible, but also by perception, memory, and our ability to connect seemingly unrelated elements. What we see is always an interpretation of the world around us. The photographs in this series deliberately explore this tension. Encounters between people, ...

On the southwestern coast of Bangladesh, where the Sibsa and Kholpetua rivers meet the tides of the Bay of Bengal, water shapes every rhythm of life and every struggle within it. This fragile delta in the districts of Khulna and Satkhira stands on the frontline of the climate crisis. Rising sea levels, increasingly powerful cyclones, and saline intrusion have transformed a landscape once ...

“Maria, una historia de amor” (“Maria, a love story”) explores the unexpected bond that grew between my elderly neighbour Maria and my daughter Zélie after her birth. Maria, a 75-year-old widow, became an essential presence in our daily lives, transforming what began as a simple relationship between neighbours into a chosen family built on care, affection, and mutual support. The project ...

This project began as an investigation into my home and family, starting from an archive of photographs taken by my mother when she was my age: mostly images of animals. My parents are hoteliers, and I grew up inside the hotel they built, a place where private life and work have always overlapped. What began as a small family business gradually expanded, slowly erasing the boundary between ...

In this dialogue, Ukrainian artists Ruslana Kliuchko and Anna Perepechai explore how war, distance, and memory inform their practices. Moving beyond conventional photojournalism, both artists examine landscape and material culture as active participants in history and human experience. We’ve discussed subverting colonial representations of place, the ethical responsibilities of visual ...

A path is not just a distance between two points. Some paths lead over safely paved roads, some over uncomfortable gravel, or soft forest floors, and open fields. Some show early on where they are heading; others lose themselves with every step. What seems clear in the distance changes as you draw closer. Still other paths cross for a moment, briefly connect, and then part ways again. As ...

“Slowing Down” examines the idea of “big themes” in art, particularly in photography, questioning how and why certain themes become more valuable than others and analyzing the mechanisms that underlie these processes of hierarchization. By observing and photographing my everyday life, I focus on the ordinary, the small, and the simple as a counterpoint to the shiny, loud, and astonishing, which ...

In “Bordando el manto terrestre” (translated from Spanish as “Embroidering the Earth's Mantle”), a 1961 work by Remedios Varo, a tower is depicted, where female beings, the “Creators of life”, are weaving the fabric of the world and its mysteries into existence: “Through digging paths back to the roots, a plane between present and past unfolds itself; a place where absence is part of a harmonious ...

My project explores the “Black Outdoors”, a conceptual framework within which to examine the contours of Black life and Black identity that exist outside traditional boundaries of citizenship, safety, state protection and property ownership. Emerging from the field of Black Studies, this framework, constructed by scholars J. Kameron Carter and Sarah Jane Cervenak at Duke University, helps me ...

The latest photobook picks by Der Greif “In Focus” is Der Greif’s photobook review series, spotlighting our picks from the current open call for submissions and our community artists' publications. This month, we write about “Probable Cause” by Henri Airo and “Tua Sorella” by Veronica Barbato. Personally, I found writing about these books challenging because the most obvious link between ...

“Muss ja. Und selbst?” and “Dividendenbuffet” are examples of my ongoing documentary approach, which explores how people shape and are shaped by their surroundings, with an eye for the quirks and microcosms of everyday life. The first of these projects, “Muss ja. Und selbst?” is an untranslatable German response to the question "How are you?" It means something like "It needs to be. How about ...

This is a story about learning to swim in the water Narcissus drowned in. At the core of photography lies a mirror - a borrowed fragment of life printed on a piece of paper. However the image it carries is not as simple. It is the ultimate narcissist that wishes only to be observed, so compelling that it convinces us into believing it represents reality due to its indexical value. But it is an ...

Guest Room is a format that fosters collaboration and sparks creative exchange. For this edition, curator and researcher Annet Dekker invited Margriet Schavemaker to collaboratively explore "The Brilliance of the Mundane". "Millions of images circulate daily, some are profiled on social media sites, uploaded on personal pages, or printed in photobooks. Yet most are discarded in the dark corners ...

Finding roots and narrative form through global aesthetics and proximity Images that circulate widely on social media play a decisive role in shaping how social and political realities are produced, perceived, and contested. Far from being neutral, these images contribute to the formation of cultural and territorial identities, reinforcing dominant narratives while also holding the potential to ...