The Ceuta-pictures of Piet den Blanken
These
are the faces of young men who want a better life
Dutch photographer Piet den Blanken has taken up a ambitious project: he is making a photographic document of the new borders of Europe. The Ceuta-pictures are part of that project.
He stayed a couple of weeks in Ceuta and surroundings. In Tanger the police took his films, but he managed to give them empty rolls. What was on the full rolls you can see now on this page.
Ceuta is a Spanish enclave in Marocco, in the North of Africa. It is small town with a harbour on the the bay of Algeciras.
The men come from all over Africa. On foot, by buses, hitchhiking. No luggage, no schooling, no money. They cross the border between Marocco and Ceuta and then they think they have arrived in the port to Europe. It is not.
They sit on the beach, looking over the Gulf. On the other side, within eye-sight, lies Europe. It is here that they realize that Ceuta is not a gateway. It is a trap.
There is a ferry, from Ceuta to Algeciras, on the Spanish mainland. But the man are not allowed to take the ferry. Instead they are taken in by the Spanish Guardia Civil, registrated and then put away in a miserable refugee-camp.
Here they wait. Spain cannot send them back, because neighbour Marocco refuses to let them enter. So Spain feeds them and then - almost man by man - allowes them to take the ferry.
At the ferry the Guardia Civil and the police conduct searches. North-Africa is drugs-country, so they comb out all luggage. Den Blanken photographed how a man was caught with eleven kilo's of hasjiesj in his bag. No, the man was no African. He was a countryman of Den Blanken, a Dutchman.
Piet den Blanken (1951) is a wellknown Dutch photojournalist, whose pictures frequently appear in European magazines and newspapers. He has published photobooks on very diverse subjects.
His above-mentioned project of photographing the new borders of Europe resulted in 1996 in a series on the German manhunters at the infamous Oder-Neisse border between Germany and Poland.
Den Blanken's newest production
concerns the life of prostitutes. This series is called
The Prostitution Pictures. The pictures show whores and streetwalkers on
various places in the world, working or private.
Den Blanken
followed the war in El Salvador since the outbreak. He still
returns to this country
every year. Last summer he discovered what has
happened to a one-armed Salvadorian
kid-soldier
whom he made sort-of-famous nine years ago.
Together with scientist Lou Keune of
the Tilburg University he made a book on El Salvador:
Surviving in Time of War.
Furthermore
Den Blanken pictured real life in Cuba, resulting
in a
shocking series: Cuba as it is.
And of course Den Blanken is also present at The Eye of the Low Countries, the new comprehensive website for Dutch and Belgian photojournalists.
Last but not least: Den Blanken has an own homepage, from where you can find links to all his pictures.
A HREF="http://www.denblanken.com/form1.html">
Letter
to Piet
Just click on the letter
© 1997 Rob Ruggenberg (homepage).
Last modified: January 20, 1997
