Eiko Grimberg

22.03.2025 –
10.05.2025

New Fatigue

The twenties begin with a global state of emergency. The storming of the Capitol in Washington in January 2021 is followed a year later by the Russian attack on Ukraine, the uprising against the regime in Iran, the Hamas attack on Israel, the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the presidential elections in the USA, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and the fires in Los Angeles.

Is this chain of events a stutter in history? How can these occurrences be visually recorded and represented? What can documentary photography achieve? Do I have to be on site? Can the chronicler distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant at the moment of the events – when, according to Kierkegaard, life is lived forward and understood backward?

What survives, what is worth remembering? Are the image sequences of recent years yesterday's news? Who still wants to see photos of anti-Corona demonstrations? Yet photography generates a surplus of meaning that extends beyond what is actually in focus. The camera seems to have been interested in something else. Here, the political chronicle opens up space for the private and idiosyncratic.

My new task is to answer the question of whether and – if so – how the present can be photographed. A journal of the twenties of the 21st century, recorded in the cities of Europe.

Eiko Grimberg