IONA HOGENDOORN
Photographer, filmmaker, visual storyteller
MY HOME IS NOT YOUR HOME
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During several journeys to Israel and Palestine, I came across many situations where it was completely unclear to whom the land belonged. Settler roads and roads for Palestinians criss cross, Palestinian lands are becoming more and more islands within the Westbank. The conflict evolves around land, increasingly becoming more Israeli, violating the official borders and turning the occupied territory of Palestine into the often called the Palestinian "archipelago", or "Swiss cheese". So although it seems that there is a direct border between Israel and "Palestine", reality is much more complicated. While travelling in Palestine, one crosses borders, checkpoints and zones all the time.
"My home is not your home" focuses deliberately not on the human face, but on the land and places. It's the land that has such a historical and emotional baggage... and tells so much about the human stories ocurring on it.
WALLS
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"Walls" is a parallel story to "My home is not your home", focussing on the visible and invisible walls in Israel/The Westbank. The two are divided by a wall (or fences), which meanders through the landscape, dividing families, lands from their owners, and blocks roads.
But there are also other walls within this big wall: the famous wailing wall in Jerusalem of course, walls around Arab ghettos in Israel; and also the invisible walls between the population; Israelis and Palestinians having different rights and being treated differently, and this is often condemned as the Israeli "Apartheid".
Hebron, on the Westbank, for example, is divided in 2 zones: Zone H1, under Palestinian authority, and zone H2, home to both Palestinians and settlers, remaining under Israeli control. Between the zones there are checkpoints.
In "Walls", I try to show those walls - the walls that have made it so difficult to resolve this long lasting conflict. Until the physical and psychological walls are not torn down, there can be no solution.
DENKEND AAN HOLLAND
During the making of the book "Denkend aan Holland" (see: commissions) there were many pictures made throughout the year and all over Holland that were not included in the book. Nevertheless, they give a striking impression of a memory of a country that has undergone a rapid modernization since the end of the Second World War, and in the course lost many of it's traditions. A few of the photographs that didn't make it to the book but are worth a peek are in this series.
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THE COLOURS OF CACARICA
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Cacarica is a very small settlement in the Darien region of Colombia, close to the border with Panama. While most people think this is a war on drugs, here the conflict is actually about land. This region, the Darien, is also called the second lung of Latin America, and is the missing bit of the Pan-American Highway. To be able to complete the road, it is planned to dry out the muddy ground of the rainforest through palmoil plantations for 10 years. This would exhaust the soil and leave it ready for the highway and the flow of US products into South America.
In 1997 more than 4,000 inhabitants of Cacarica, Afro-Colombian descendants of slaves, were forcibly and violently displaced in what is called "Operation Genesis". This was carried out by the joint forces of the government and paramilitary, and killed many of the local people.
In an exceptional effort, after living in a big hall in Quibdo for 3 years, the communities managed to win back their lands in 2000. Nonetheless, they are still treated with violence by armed groups.
The inhabitants of Cacarica declared Cacarica a peace zone, and the inhabitants view themselves as caretakers of the rainforest. They are therefore very aware they are also caretakers of our Earth.