165 - Nick Hannes
Nick Hannes was born in Antwerp in 1974. Based in Ranst, Belgium, he graduated from the Royal Acadehis of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent in 1997 and for the next eight years worked as a photojournalist before quitting press assignments in 2006 to fully concentrate on his own documentary projects, most of which have a strong political and social component.
His first trip was a year-long journey by bus and train through the former Soviet Union, which resulted in his first book. Red Journey (Lannoo Publishers, 2009). The book deals with the transitional phase in post-communist society and laid the foundation of Nick’s photographic approach in which irony, ambiguity and visual metaphors play prominent roles.
In 2010 Nick started Mediterranean. The Continuity of Man., an epic project that involved twenty trips to twenty one Mediterranean countries over a four year period. Published in 2014 by Hannibal Publishers (Belgium), this series juxtaposes parallel realities and paradoxes of the Mediterranean region, focusing on various contemporary issues such as mass-tourism, urbanization, migration, conflict and crisis. Mediterranean. The Continuity of Man. was launched at the Museum of Photography (FoMu) in Antwerp in 2014, before travelling to several international photography festivals and museums.
HIs third book, Garden Of Delight (Hannibal / Editions André Frère, 2018), showcases Dubai in the UAE as the ultimate playground of globalization and capitalism, and raises questions about authenticity and sustainability. This series was awarded the Magnum photography Award in 2017 and the Zeiss Photography Award in 2018.
During the outbreak of Covid-19 in the spring of 2020 Nick started to photograph his family in lockdown and the resulting visual diary, An Unexpected Lesson In Joy, was his first self-published book.
Nick has exhibited internationally and since 2008 has taught documentary photography at KASK/The School of Arts in Ghent. He is represented by Panos Pictures (London) and Black Eye Gallery (Sydney).
On episode 165, Nick discusses, among other things:
- His lockdown project, An Unexpected Lesson In Joy.
- His photographic origin story.
- Early years in Kurdistan as an ‘activist with a camera’.
- His first book project Red Journey, documenting his travels in the former Soviet Union.
- How the project triggered his interest in urbanisation.
- Mediterranean. The Continuity of Man.
- The strangeness of Dubai, the most excessive example of market driven urban development.
- How he got access to shoot the images in Garden Of Delight
- How he manages to fund his trips.
- How being able to travel again post lockdown made him feel ‘reborn’.
- His next project focussing on new capital cities.
Referenced:
- Mediterranean: Portrait of a Sea, Ernle Bradford
- The Capsular Civilisation: On The City in the Age of Fear, Lieven De Cauter
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“I was in Kazakstan in August, shooting every day from morning til evening. I was walking again, chasing
pictures again. I felt… reborn. ”