Fotoausstellung: "25 MILLION. THE POWER OF DREAMS. NORTH KOREA." von Xiomara Bender in der Leica Galerie.

In the organizer's words:

"25 MILLION. NORTH KOREA. THE POWER OF DREAMS."

The Leica Gallery Düsseldorf is showingimpressive photographs by Xiomara Bender until June 01, 2024

Under the title "25 MILLION. NORTH KOREA. THE POWER OF DREAMS." ,the Leica Gallery Düsseldorf is presenting works by Leica photographer Xiomara Bender that provide impressive insights into the unknown country of North Korea.

More than almost any other Western photographer, Xiomara Bender has succeeded in traveling to the hermetically sealed country of North Korea several times over the past ten years, getting to know it and documenting it photographically. While the first trip still had to follow a predetermined dramaturgy of a state-organized tour, she managed to leave predetermined routes during numerous subsequent visits, marked by ambitious curiosity. She wanted to form her own impression of the seemingly faceless country in order to discover the true stories behind a carefully constructed façade - those of worries and fears, of wishes and desires, of individual happiness as opposed to collective bliss.

"I think empathy can only arise where anonymity is eliminated.Those who feel are less susceptible to the prejudices that still dominate our image of North Korea. The world is not black and white, not even in North Korea," says Xiomara Bender."The noble claim to a truthful depiction of the environment seems almost anachronistic in view of what is available for dissemination on all channels and platforms of the digital world, and yet it is all the more topical for this very reason. The more opaque the world, the greater the tendency to simplify."

The exhibition "25 MILLION. NORTH KOREA.THE POWER OF DREAMS." provides visitors to the Leica Gallery Düsseldorf with incomparable and at the same time impressive insights behind the scenes of a sometimes surreal-looking staging of a country that is usually described in the media as a mixture of nuclear madness and mass psychotic monotony. In this project, it was particularly important to Xiomara Bender to use the photographs to convey a degree of closeness to the people portrayed in her everyday life that arouses empathic curiosity in the viewer. "People in North Korea live and survive with dignity through the power of their dreams. Their faces tell the stories that bring us closer to a country whose people deserve undivided attention and unbiased sympathy, "says Xiomara Bender about the people living in North Korea and her work as a photographer ."In order torecognize and document change ,the camerais often the only tool in a country whose leadership does not want an outside view and the rest of the political world is not really interested in the condition of the people," adds Bender .She last visited North Korea in September 2019 to mark the 71st anniversary of the founding of the state. Some of the photographs in the exhibition, which will be on display for the first time at the Leica Gallery Düsseldorf, were taken during this visit. Accompanying the exhibition, her new book "Waiting for the Rainbow, 10 Years of North Korea" will be published by teNeues in May 2024.

About Xiomara Bender

The German-Swiss photographer was born in Basel in 1987, left her home country at the age of 17 and went to India to finish her school education. She then attended the Technische Kunsthochschule in Berlin. Since graduating, she has been working as a freelance photographer. Numerous national and international awards, such as the C/O Berlin Foundation "Close Up!" and the International Photography Award, have recognized her unmistakable visual language right from the start of her career. In 2016, Kehrer Verlag published her book "North Korea. The Power of Dreams", with which she won the German Photo Book Award 2018 of the Hochschule der Medien in silver.Her work has appeared in "Stern" and "Zeit", among others.

The exhibition "25 MILLION. NORTH KOREA. THE POWER OF DREAMS. " can be seen at theLeica Gallery Düsseldorf in the KÖ Galerie (Königsallee 60) from Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p. m. until June 1, 2024 .Free admission.