Rob Hornstra

Rob Hornstra is acclaimed nationally and internationally for his long-term documentary projects such as The Sochi Project: An Atlas and Tourism in the Caucasus (2014), Man Next Door (2017) and The Europeans (2020 - 2030).

Striving to paint a human picture of his time, Hornstra places himself in the rich tradition of humanist photography, where great names like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Ed van der Elsken preceded him. Although landscapes and still lifes play an important role in his projects, portraits predominate. Hornstra describes his projects as slow journalism: where regular journalism records what happens, slow journalism is about slowly revealing why certain things happen.

In the first decade of his career, Hornstra focused on Russia, where he captured the shift from an emerging economy to an increasingly closed society. He worked on several stories in Russia, with his freedom of movement gradually decreasing until he was no longer allowed to enter the country. Since 2019, he has focused on making a time document on Europe, a project that will continue until 2030. Although the distance between Russia and Europe has not been as great in decades as it is now, this exhibition actually brings the two closer together than ever by focusing on us what fraternises as humanity. After all, is there really that much difference between that butcher from France or from Lithuania or between those footballers from Russia and England? This exhibition will be a celebration of the condition humaine in which the common experience of being human can be shared.

This retrospective offers a new perspective on Hornstra's oeuvre. For the first time, connections and similarities are sought between the various series he has worked on since 2003. He has always worked with a list of self-defined categories, such as work, youth, sports, transport and religion, inspired by German photographer August Sander (1876-1964). Although this categorical method is guiding, it remains almost invisible in the presentation of his work. Until now, because this exhibition focuses precisely on his categorical working process, using it to build bridges between the various series he has worked on since 2003.