Stations of the Cross

Journey and goal, destination and homecoming: these are the themes, all closely interrelated, that are central in “Kruisweg,” a series of surprising exhibitions accommodated in historic churches just outside the city of Groningen. In “Kruisweg” six photographers, from The Netherlands, Germany, France and Spain, each in their own way give shape to the theme of journeying – to the experience of moving through space and time, the experience of being “somewhere else” and the memories afterward. They made photographs along the Amazon and in Africa, in the bewitching light of a silent corridor and the noisy darkness of an Underground, of the movement of thin trees on a frozen field and of self-chastisement during a religious festival.

The six exhibitions can be visited individually, or as a series. The churches, each only a couple of kilometres from the next, are easily reached by either bicycle or automobile. A route laid out between the two farthest ends of the series, Obergum and Visvliet, part of it meandering through the Reitdiepdal, affords visitors travel experience of their own, through the green Groningen landscape of meadows and fields bordered by woods or hedgerows, as imposing as it is varied.