Ad van Denderen the Mediterranean Sea So Blue, So Blue Photography

So Blue, So Blue by Ad Van Denderen steidlMACK

According to the ‘Plan Bleu’ sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme, in the next 20 years around 205 million holiday or second homes will be built to accommodate 350 million tourists annually along the coasts of Turkey and Spain alone. This influx of tourism and the return of ‘westernised’ immigrants fuels religious and political radicalization. At the same time it is the fulcrum of major economic changes and ecological pressures.

The starting point of So Blue, So Blue was in 2001 when Van Denderen photographed a group of a hundred illegal immigrants landing on a beach in the south of Spain in rubber boats. Soaked to the skin, they ran off in the early morning light. Three hours later tourists appeared on the same beach, spreading out their towels to enjoy another sunny day. Realising that the region is riven with these inconsistencies, he has spent the past 5 years photographing in everycountry that borders the Mediterranean Sea. So Blue, So Blue is his personal attempt to make sense of the immense economic, political, socio-religious and ecological changes taking place around the open space that Europe, Asia and Africa have contested and shared for centuries. Lees meer ...

Ad Van Denderen, born in 1943, worked as a photojournalist for Vrij Nederland, Geo and The Independent magazine, among others, and earned a number of prestigious prizes, including the Visa d’Or at the international photo festival Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan in 2001 and the oeuvre prize of The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts in 2007. His previous books include Go No Go, Peace in The Holy Land and Welkom in Suid Afrika. He is a member of Vu Agency. See for more GO No GO ...

See for an interview with Ad van Denderen ... & more Mediterranee the photographs of Henriette Grindat ...