LIVING APART TOGETHER (1993 & 2013)

In 1993, for a commission from the Amsterdam Municipal Archive, Kadir van Lohuizen followed the life of a family of Moroccan origin, living in Amsterdam Oost. The father, Ali, had just retired after a career as a factory worker which had begun in the 1960s as a guest worker at Friki. The mother, Laila, worked in the local community centre, the three youngest children were in school in Amsterdam, and the other three children had returned to Morocco to live. Van Lohuizen accompanied the family when they went back to Morocco on vacation and to visit relatives there. He saw an average family who tried to be part of the Dutch society, but nevertheless continued to be viewed as ‘those Moroccans’, while in Morocco they were viewed as the strange people from The Netherlands.

Now, twenty years later, Van Lohuizen visited this family again. Have they finally found their place in Dutch society, or have they shaped their identity in some other manner? What do they think about the hardening of Dutch society and the rise of the populist, anti-immigrant party, the PVV? With his sequel Van Lohuizen poses essential questions that touch directly on Dutch integration policy. When are you really Dutch? When are you accepted?

At the same time, this series is not just about the changes in the lives of a family and in Dutch society. Indirectly, he also reveals how a now widely honoured photographer has grown and changed, after two decades of roaming the world and working on a range of social subjects. In a certain sense, for The Sequel Van Lohuizen returned to The Netherlands and the beginning of his career.