About
Documentary photography project
MIDDLE TOWN: PICTURING THE UNSPECTACULAR
March - December 2012
© Hans van der Meer, Hoofddorp, 2009. From: The Netherlands - Off The Shelf
About the project
Countries and cities worldwide have a great need to distinguish themselves, especially in the truly exceptional. At a global level, countries compete with one another to obtain major events like the Olympics, the World Cup football, becoming the cultural capital of Europe, etc. Towns and localities in any given country differentiate and pride themselves on their historic heritage or outstanding cultural or sports events that attract tourists and visitors. But what do these exceptional events in these exceptional towns reveal about the quality of daily life in a country, the way a society is organized, the cultural values embedded in the variety of activities taking place in a community? It is the "Middle town", a place with no name for the tourists, where the real differences occur, this is where we can still be surprised by the way how others organize their lives, where we can learn from the different. In this project, we will endeavor to look at ordinary people in ordinary towns in ordinary regions – exploring the extraordinary habits, and exceptionally unspectacular yet meaningful ways of life. The aim of the project is to get much closer to the nature of our societies, by making the invisible average visible.
The project will engage 12 emerging photographers from Latvia, Turkey, and other EU/Neighborhood countries. Two workshops – initial one in Turkey in March and an editing workshop in Latvia in August will be carried out and led by experienced Dutch mentors, with a possibility of on-line consultations in between. Each of the participants will carry out an individual documentary project within the subject. Work can be wide range of approaches: cityscapes, images of human behavior, still lives, work with vernacular/archival material, etc, as long as it expresses normality, things with qualities of the 'unspectacular': those parts of the everyday that feel so normal that they go unnoticed. The results will be put together into a multimedia presentation and exhibitions in Latvia, Turkey, and possibly elsewhere.
Project time-plan:
- beginning of February 2012: finalized selection of the participants
- 10-17 March: 1st workshop (Trabzon, Turkey) - portfolio reviews, defining the projects, trial shootings in Trabzon
- March – July: individual work on projects in own countries
- 4-12 August: 2nd workshop (Kuldīga, Latvia, as part of International Summer School of Photography 2012) - discussing and editing the projects, putting together individual and joint results
- from September 2012: exhibitions/presentations of project results
Project mentors:
Bas Vroege, founder and director, Paradox agency (Netherlands) A curator of numerous exhibitions, photography editor and teacher, he has been advising several high-profile arts institutions and university programmes and currently teaches curatorial practice at Masters in Film and Photographic Studies (MaFPS) at the University of Leiden. More on Paradox website
Hans van der Meer, documentary photographer (Netherlands). His project European Fields has been widely exhibited internationally and published into a book in 2006. His exhibition and book “The Netherlands – Off The Shelf” focusing on contemporary culture aspects of the Dutch middle tows, will be released in January 2012. See The Netherlands - off the shelf and European Fields
Organisers:
ISSP (Latvia), GAPO (Turkey), Trabzon Foto Forum (Turkey) in cooperation with Paradox (Netherlands).
This project takes place in the framework of EU-Turkey Tandem programme and is supported by European Cultural Foundation and Stiftung Mercator. More information at www.tandemexchange.eu.
