Bloed en Honing (Blood and Honey)

Photography: Nicole Segers

Text: Irene van der Linde

Design: Edgar Smaling and Carlo Elias (Smel creative agency)

2020

Book of the month – October 2021

By mini-presentations, Pennings Foundation regularly pays attention to recently published books.

This month the trilogy about the new borders of Europe by photographer Nicole Segers and writer Irene van der Linde is on show.

In nearly twenty years, Nicole Segers and Irene van der Linde have seen the fringes of European unification on the new eastern border and along the Bosphorus. Their latest journey takes them through the Balkanregion, the patchwork of Europe, where they search for the meaning of the new borders and present a story of unity and separation. Previously published: 'The end of Europe - Encounters along the new eastern border' (2004) and 'The Istanbul ferry - Encounters along the Bosphorus' (2010). With 'Blood and Honey – Encounters on the Borders in the Balkanregion' (2020) they complete their trilogy.

The name Balkan is a contraction of the words 'bal' (honey) and 'kan' (blood), the land of blood and honey. The makers had in mind a book with one continuous story in which writer and photographer would alternately speak, as in a travel journal. This means that a number of pages of text alternate with a number of pages of images. Just as the photos fill entire pages, the texts also fill entire pages. To achieve this, there is variation in font size.

The photos vary from poetic landscapes, which evoke a feeling of nostalgia for better times, to sad cityscapes, which mainly reflect decay and desolation.

'Blood and honey' has been voted 'Best text/photo book 2021' by the Dutch Photo Book Award.

The book was published by Boom Uitgevers | Lecturis and is for sale via www.bloedenhoning.nl (€ 44.90. Also available as a deluxe edition). The trilogy is in the Pennings Foundation library.