The Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo is organising the exhibition of the photographer Nick Hannes in collaboration with the Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía and Caja Granada. The exhibition will be on display at the Foundation's headquarters from 12 May to 12 June 2016.
Over the past five years, Nick Hannes (Belgium, 1974) has travelled to twenty countries on the Mediterranean coast. The cradle of civilisation, the birthplace of three major religions and the crossroads of Europe, Africa and Asia, the Mediterranean region is highly heterogeneous and has a turbulent history. Over the centuries, people have travelled, traded and fought battles on its shores. The Romans called it Mare NostrumOur Sea, at the height of its empire, when it covered the entire coastline.
The region, with more than 200 million tourists a year, is the world's most popular holiday destination. However, tourism and urban sprawl have left deep scars on the Mediterranean landscape. On the other side of the horizon, on the African coast, thousands of people also flock, but for a different reason. Between 2014 and 2015, more than a million migrants set sail in dilapidated boats in an attempt to reach Italy or Greece. For them, the sea represents a moat that prevents them from accessing Fortress Europe, and for many, this moat has become their tomb.
At the end of 2009, the crisis hit Greece hard. Within a year, when Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in a protest call, the episode was the trigger for the Arab Spring. His death lit the fuse for a wave of change that spread like wildfire across Egypt, Libya and Syria, where the revolt led to a bloody civil war. During the summer of 2014 Gaza was relentlessly bombed once again. Today, the Mediterranean is once again a battlefield, a scene whose complex history makes it all too familiar.
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