Mennonite girls
Zacatecas, Mexico, 1994
Edition:
50x 24x30 cm (20 available)
1x 50x60 cm (last from an edition of 10)
1x 70x100 cm (last from an edition of 10)
Printed on 300 grams Hahnemühle Fine Art Pearl paper + 1 cm white border
Delivered with a numbered and digitally signed certificatie of authenticity
"From 1993 to 1995 I worked on a documentary about the Mexican Mennonites. An originally Mennonite community from Friesland that left the Netherlands centuries ago.
I met these girls in the middle of the very desolate and poor landscape of Zacatecas, Mexico, where a new Mennonite Colony had just been founded. The people were having a hard time and poverty was great. I was a welcome break from the daily grind for the children in this colony.
For years this was one of my most famous images from this documentary. Ultimately, it was also a subject and way of working that I left behind when I left for NY in 1996 to do an internship there and further develop myself as a photographer. When I look back now, this photo has not lost any of its authority for me after all these years and it has an important place in my oeuvre."
Morad Bouchakour (Brussels, 1965) is the son of an Algerian father and a Dutch mother. He spent his formative years in Amsterdam. After studying at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Bouchakour moved to New York in 1996, where he lived and worked until 2009. Since then, Bouchakour has been living and working from Amsterdam again.
With his portraits and reports, Bouchakour manages to capture intriguing and spontaneous moments from the daily lives of the people he meets. “In-between moments”, in which the subjects seem to disappear for a moment in thoughts. His photographs reveal an inner world and invite imagination and empathy, evoking familiarity that keeps them intriguing.
His most recent works have a universal theme; the passing on of traumas through the generations, for which Bouchakour drew inspiration from his own family history. In this series (Traces/Traces), the first works of which were commissioned by the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Bouchakour combined various techniques that were new to him, such as textiles, photo collage and painting techniques.
Bouchakour has exhibited in various leading museums, including the Rijksmuseum (FEEST!), Museum of the City of New York (Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered), the Nieuwe Kerk (The American Indian) and the Mauritshuis (Flash/Back).
Published books:
The Netherlands is celebrating! (2002)
NoPainNoGain (2008)
Menhattan (2009)
Frankemaheerd 2 (2010)
Peking Dog (2014)
Bye Bye Portfolio (2016)