Kai Wiedenhöfer Livres

"Over a nine meter wall you cannot shake hands," says a Palestinian pensioner who lives in the shadow of Israel's growing Separation Barrier. Kai Wiedenhàfer, who documented the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and has been photographing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for more than a decade, has spent the last few years documenting inhabitants of the Occupied Palestinian Territories who find themselves in the path of the barrier. He has also documented the growing barrier itself, a 650-kilometer mix of walls, fences, ditches and earth mounds that serves as a border between Israel and a projected future Palestinian entity. Working in color and black-and-white with a 6x17 cm panoramic camera, Wiedenhàfer has produced depictions of the wall--and life in its lengthening shadow--that make it hard not to share his view, informed by a life in Berlin, that separation barriers do not offer real solutions to political conflict.

Seit über zwanzig Jahren ist Kai Wiedenhöfer im Nahen Osten unterwegs. Dort sind viele Journalisten und Fotografen, um der Welt von den Konflikten zwischen Israelis und Palästinensern zu berichten. Doch keiner konzentriert sich wie Wiedenhöfer ausschließlich auf Gaza. Und anders als die meisten, fotografiert er noch dort, wenn sich die internationale Aufmerksamkeit längst wieder anderen Themen zugewendet hat. Auch 2009, ein Jahr nach dem Angriff der israelischen Armee, war Wiedenhöfer in Gaza. Bei dieser Recherchereise entstanden verstörend ruhige, fast repetitive Panoramabilder von zerstörten Gebäuden und Porträts versehrter Körper. Auf den Fassadenresten niedergebombter Häuser und den Gliedmaßen der Palästinenser zeigt Kai Wiedenhöfer in seiner eigenen dokumentarischen Ästhetik die Landschaft des Kriegs, eine Geographie der Zerstörung. Kai Wiedenhöfer, geboren 1966, studierte Dokumentarfotografie an der Folkwang Schule in Essen und Arabisch in Damaskus, Syrien. Für die Agentur Lookat Photos (Schweiz) arbeitet er seit 1989 im Nahen Osten. Er wurde vielfach ausgezeichnet, unter anderem mit dem Alexia Grant, Getty Grant und World Press Award. Für die Arbeit am Book of Destruction erhielt Kai Wiedenhöfer den Prix Carmignac Gestion du photojournalisme. Im Steidl Verlag sind bereits seine Bücher Perfect Peace (2002) und The Wall (2006) erschienen.

“Good fences make good neighbors”—so goes the proverb. But what makes a good fence? Certainly not one that prevents neighbors from being seen in the first place. Indeed, such divisive barriers create enemies. Peace starts where walls fall, not where they are erected. The Berlin Wall is the best proof of that, says Kai Wiedenhöfer, who witnessed its fall first hand. Wiedenhöfer has photographed separation barriers throughout the world, from Berlin in 1989, to Belfast, Mexico, Ceuta and Melilla, Baghdad—and frequently in Israel, to document the walls with which the country has so comprehensively surrounded itself: at the borders to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Egypt and Lebanon. Between 2003 and 2018 he made ten journeys to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories to photograph the fences, walls and checkpoints which the Israeli government is still building. Wiedenhöfer has documented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over three decades now. His new photos show that the hope of lasting peace in the region is becoming ever more unrealistic in our time. For a wall is a paradox: it intensifies the very violence it seeks to keep in check, and thereby makes further surveillance and fortifications necessary.

In 1989 Kai Wiedenhöfer photographed the fall of the Berlin Wall in his hometown, and was deeply moved by this experience of history unfolding. At the time, Wiedenhöfer, like many, believed this event would mark the end of walls being employed as political tools and dismissed them as anachronistic instruments of division. Over twenty years later, history has proved us wrong; indeed walls have enjoyed a barbaric renaissance. Border barriers have been erected in the US, Europe, and the Middle East in the aftermath of political, economic, religious and ethnic conflicts. Wiedenhöfer has documented walls in Belfast, Ceuta and Melilla, Baghdad, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the American- Mexican border, Cyprus, Korea as well as the remains of the Iron Curtain. Confrontiers presents Wiedenhöfer’s comprehensive project and evidences his conviction that walls are not solutions to today’s political and economic problems, but proof of human weakness, error and our inability to communicate with one another.