Dutch photographer Jeroen Swolfs had nearly achieved his goal: capturing life in the present day in every country in the world with a single photograph. ‘Streets of the World’ was the result of the ambitious journey Swolfs began in 2009. On May 20, he was due to launch his exhibition of the same name at De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, alongside the World Press Photo exhibition.
It was the first time he had exhibited the nearly two hundred street photographs he had made around the world over the previous seven years. “I wanted to know what the world looked like today—to meet and photograph the people of my time. And that is what I did. It is fantastic finally to be able to show everyone the photographs and the message they carry, through my first exhibition and a National Geographic documentary.”
Afghanistan, Kabul, June 2012. A woman wearing a burqa hurries down a street in central Kabul where all kinds of goods are sold on the sidewalk. Baghdad, Iraq, December 2015. The thousand-year-old Al-Mutanabbi book street was destroyed by a car bomb in 2007. The street was rebuilt, and the book market once again attracts many visitors.
On Sunday, May 22, National Geographic Channel was scheduled to air a documentary about Jeroen Swolfs. The film followed him during part of his journey and showed how he worked in places including Iraq, Myanmar, Turkmenistan and Bangkok.
I was repeatedly amazed by the many similar ways in which life takes shape
The documentary also showed images he made of remarkable events, from his hospitalization in Egypt and his heavily armed visit to Somalia to a bizarre incident while making the photograph in the Netherlands.
Traveling Exhibition
At the time, Swolfs still faced a challenging list of six countries, including Libya, Eritrea and Yemen. He hoped to complete his journey that fall, when his book about the unique adventure was due to appear. With the end of his journey in sight, the photographer had also set himself a new goal: he hoped that his exhibition, like him, could travel the world and share Streets of the World’s positive view of the world with every country he had visited.
Somalia, Mogadishu, April 2015. After years under Al-Shabaab rule, residents of this devastated city can once again visit Mogadishu’s beach.
By showing all the countries side by side, his exhibition Streets of the World presented a more positive image of the world than the one familiar from the media: “Every place I visited had something special—some because they made me happy, and others because they shocked me. But whichever country I visited, I was repeatedly amazed by the many similar ways in which life takes shape, wherever you are in the world.
Despite differences in customs, colors, religions and environments, I see the same beautiful things and values everywhere—things that connect people: resilience and solidarity, friendship and love, desires and needs. As my journey progressed, that proved to be the central message of Streets of the World: showing how much we resemble one another, not how different we are.”
www.streetsoftheworld.nl
