Confrontier

In 1989 Kai Wiedenhöfer photographed the fall of the Berlin Wall in his hometown, and was deeply moved by this
experience of history unfolding. At the time, Wiedenhöfer, like many, believed this event would mark the end of walls
being employed as political tools and dismissed them as anachronistic instruments of division. Over twenty years later,
history has proved us wrong; indeed walls have enjoyed a barbaric renaissance. Border barriers have been erected in
the US, Europe, and the Middle East in the aftermath of political, economic, religious and ethnic conflicts. Wiedenhöfer
has documented walls in Belfast, Ceuta and Melilla, Baghdad, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the American-
Mexican border, Cyprus, Korea as well as the remains of the Iron Curtain. Confrontiers presents Wiedenhöfer s comprehensive
project and evidences his conviction that walls are not solutions to today s political and economic problems,
but proof of human weakness, error and our inability to communicate with one another.
Kai Wiedenhöfer, born in Schwenningen, Germany in 1966, received a Masters in photography and editorial design from
the Folkwang School in Essen and studied Arabic in Damascus, Syria. Since 1989 the focus of his work has been the
Middle East. Wiedenhöfer has received numerous awards including the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Alexia Foundation
For World Peace Grant, World Press Photo Awards, the Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography and the
Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award. Steidl has published Wiedenhöfer s Perfect Peace (2002), Wall (2007) and
The Book of Destruction (2010) whose photos comprised a solo exhibition at the Musée d Art Moderne de la Ville de
Paris.