-- Excerpt from the Kunsthal solo exhibition ‘Chinese Journey’ March – August 2018, Kunsthal, Rotterdam (NL)
The Rotterdam photographer Eli Dijkers is curious, nothing seems to escape him. He has an eye for people and animals and documents fascinating details and panoramic surveys. He likes to be surprised, preferably by cultures that area not his own. Hence his long trips through India and China with remarkable photo reports as a result. His is intrigued by ‘the land of the dragon’, which is changing so quickly that every trip he makes there seems new.
Dijkers is a photographer who starts taking photos from the moment that he leaves the airport of his destination to his arrival at the gate for the return flight to Schiphol just before departure. All his photos taken in China recall situations to the photographer. ‘Children in a farmyard, no dog in sight and a mother who puts an end to the photo session’. Time and again he recapitulates the events and not the beautiful light, the Chinese girl wearing a T-shirt from Paris, or the colour pink that recurs several times in the picture. It is inherent to his profession that the photos are composed properly and the technique is completely under control. There is no need to waste words on that. The piles of plates that he brings back with him show his meanderings through various districts of Shanghai and Fujian. They show that, in spite of the crowded streets and squares, he is always able to focus. His fond attitude towards animals – the Chinese treat them differently from what is customary in the Netherlands – is striking. So is his eye for the strange. Often almost surrealist situations: a bridal dress that seems to be being dragged into a fitting room, a man in a brightly lit corner of a dark street, a child suffering from vertigo who clings to his father’s leg, and the pieces of textile that he repeatedly comes across and that are put to a variety of uses in China.
Dijkers’ pictures show a photographer on the road, in search of a certain rhythm. As he zooms in and out, he creates a visual poetry of light and life, present and past, unfamiliar and familiar structures, people and animals in large or small spaces. Dijkers’ photographs seem to breathe, just as taking them is like breathing for him.
Eli Dijkers (1978) was born and raised in The Netherlands. He graduated from the Academy of Photography in Rotterdam in 2012, after having been awarded a PhD in Pharmacy, Nuclear Medicine and Oncology. Since then, he has received many recognitions for his photographic work, including multiple Honourable Mentions at the Black & White Spider Awards, Commended photographer in the Sony World Photography Awards and several Honourable Mentions at the Monochrome awards. He was winner of the Porta Coeli Artist Residency Award at the XIth edition of the International Contemporary Art Biennale of Florence and awarded Ilford MASTER in 2018, together with Sebastião Salgado.
Eli graduated the academy of photography with his interpretation of the city he lives in, Rotterdam, titled Temporal Existence. Post-graduation, he was one out of 12 photographers selected to document the city of Rotterdam. In addition, he is author of the self-published book Enigma, a confronting series of images about daily life on the streets of India.
Eli’s work has been extensively exhibited within the Netherlands and abroad. His first solo-exhibition at gallery Deelen Art, was curated by Sun Hee Engelstoft, at the time editor to Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol. In 2018 his work on China was shown as a solo exhibition for six successive months in de Kunsthal (museum of contemporary art) in Rotterdam. In 2021 his work is exhibited on the Bund in Shanghai and in South of Italy, during the G20 summit, together with rarely shown work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. In addition, his work has been presented in China, the USA, the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Germany, Czech, Slovakia and France. His work is currently represented by Moyi Art (China) and Porta Coeli (Italy). He was represented by Gallery Deelen Art (NL) from 2013 until the gallery ceased to exist in 2019.
More information: www.elidijkers.com
