Side Gallery
9 Side | Quayside, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 3JE
‘Confrontier’ by Kai Wiedenhofer
Today I went on my first visit to Side Gallery, Newcastle. Surrounded by interesting architecture and tucked away down a small alley, this quirky gallery really was a hidden gem. Their latest exhibition ‘Confrontier’ was by Kai Wiedenhofer, a photographer based in Berlin.
As a student in 1989, Wiedenhofer photographed the fall of the Berlin Wall. At that time, he believed that this would mark the end of walls being used as political tools and dismissed them as anachronistic instruments of division. Instead, in the twenty years since his student days, barriers have only seemed to increase in scale and number.‘Confrontier’ was a project documenting Wiedenhofer’s photographs of imposed borders worldwide - from Mexico to Iraq.
The exhibition as a whole uses the ‘wall’ as a universal symbol of division and oppression making the photographs all the more relatable. The layout of the artist’s panoramic photos reflected the mood of oppression within them. Each of the images have been stacked vertically and laid horizontally to each other thus becoming bricks in their own wall.
Despite the negative subject of the photographs, there exists within them an underlying positivity. Many of the images depict scenes of rebellion against the barriers. The graffiti and vandalism shown in some work lends a sense of hope to the pictures. Some photos could even be considered optimistic with their display of natural landscapes and cityscapes just beyond the wall.
Of all the powerful shots, I was particularly drawn to a photo of Melilla, a city in Morocco occupied by Spain. This poignant image shows local people pushing their belongings in brightly coloured bundles, the tones of which contradict the sombre content of the photo. I think that the reason this photo appealed to me was because it was one of few which included people. This inclusion is important as it amplifies the realism of the situation.
“A barrier is a proof of human weakness and errors, the inability to communicate. And where all communication is contracted, a solution of conflicts becomes impossible. The simplest reaction is to build a barrier: to cut oneself off from the others, because what comes from outside, from there, can only be a threat, a sign of disaster, the vanguard of evil” – Kai Wiedenhofer
9 Side | Quayside, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 3JE
‘Confrontier’ by Kai Wiedenhofer
Today I went on my first visit to Side Gallery, Newcastle. Surrounded by interesting architecture and tucked away down a small alley, this quirky gallery really was a hidden gem. Their latest exhibition ‘Confrontier’ was by Kai Wiedenhofer, a photographer based in Berlin.
As a student in 1989, Wiedenhofer photographed the fall of the Berlin Wall. At that time, he believed that this would mark the end of walls being used as political tools and dismissed them as anachronistic instruments of division. Instead, in the twenty years since his student days, barriers have only seemed to increase in scale and number.‘Confrontier’ was a project documenting Wiedenhofer’s photographs of imposed borders worldwide - from Mexico to Iraq.
The exhibition as a whole uses the ‘wall’ as a universal symbol of division and oppression making the photographs all the more relatable. The layout of the artist’s panoramic photos reflected the mood of oppression within them. Each of the images have been stacked vertically and laid horizontally to each other thus becoming bricks in their own wall.
Despite the negative subject of the photographs, there exists within them an underlying positivity. Many of the images depict scenes of rebellion against the barriers. The graffiti and vandalism shown in some work lends a sense of hope to the pictures. Some photos could even be considered optimistic with their display of natural landscapes and cityscapes just beyond the wall.
Of all the powerful shots, I was particularly drawn to a photo of Melilla, a city in Morocco occupied by Spain. This poignant image shows local people pushing their belongings in brightly coloured bundles, the tones of which contradict the sombre content of the photo. I think that the reason this photo appealed to me was because it was one of few which included people. This inclusion is important as it amplifies the realism of the situation.
“A barrier is a proof of human weakness and errors, the inability to communicate. And where all communication is contracted, a solution of conflicts becomes impossible. The simplest reaction is to build a barrier: to cut oneself off from the others, because what comes from outside, from there, can only be a threat, a sign of disaster, the vanguard of evil” – Kai Wiedenhofer