Scarlett Hooft Graafland – Shores Like You

The title Shores Like You was inspired by a line from a poem by Baudelaire: Invitation au voyage: Au pays qui te ressemble! It suits the content of Scarlett Hooft Graafland’s work, for which she travels to remote places of which the shores are the first thing you’d see. Besides, the title is connected to today’s migration issues, to people running from violence, and refugees drowning when their jam-packed boats capsize.

The landscapes provide a scenery for her staged installations and offer them a context. The feathery touch of the pre-imagined scenes shows no sign of the many months of preparation that precede them.

Hooft Graafland’s work emerges from a collaboration with the local community, in mutual trust, with people who help her and provide shelter, make connections, guide her, pose for her and sometimes – when the photographer herself is posing – take the desired picture for her.