EXTENDED: What Have We Done?
Unpacking Seven Decades of World Press Photo
In 2025, World Press Photo celebrates its 70th anniversary at Noorderlicht with the exhibition What Have We Done? Unpacking Seven Decades of World Press Photo, curated by photographer and curator Cristina de Middel.
Entry fee:
€9,50 · students €4,50 · stadjerpas free entry · Museumcard not valid
Tickets are available at the entrance.
Main entrance via Paterswoldseweg, a 5-minute walk from Groningen Station. Easily accessible by train and bus. Parking available at ParkBee, Theodorus Niemeyerstraat 1.
About What Have We Done?
Noorderlicht is partner and host of the world premiere, which opens on 19 September at the Niemeyer. One day later, the exhibition will travel to Johannesburg, South Africa, and in November to Dhaka, Bangladesh. Together with World Press Photo, Noorderlicht shows how we give meaning to images and calls for a more nuanced way of telling visual stories.
By looking at 70 years of archive images from World Press Photo and their context, we recognize the work that journalists have done, often under difficult conditions. At the same time, we invite visitors to see our visual past as a living source of stories that continue to change. How else could we tell these stories? In seven decades, the three words World, Press, and Photo have changed and no longer mean the same as in 1955. This exhibition shows that shift and asks the question: what’s next? It is an invitation to reflect not only on how our visual language has changed, but also on how we, as viewers and as a society, can learn to look at images with more awareness and a critical eye. At World Press Photo and Noorderlicht, we believe in the power of stories to create dialogue, raise awareness, and make change possible.
About World Press Photo
Through images we want to show the complexity of the world, start conversations, and inspire people to take action. World Press Photo is an independent non-profit organization for photojournalism and documentary photography, founded in the Netherlands in 1955. Each year, its contest and thematic exhibitions reach millions of people in more than 80 places worldwide, and its online work reaches many more. This exhibition presents the impressive archive through the eyes of curator Cristina de Middel, a Spanish documentary photographer known for her conceptual approach to photojournalism.
Rauw Vermogen
At the Niemeyer in Groningen, where What Have We Done? is also shown, Noorderlicht presents the exhibition Rauw Vermogen. This new commissioned project was made with seven young photographers from the region. They explore the future of the North of the Netherlands through stories about people, landscape, and labor. Read more here.
Roosje Klap, general and artistic director of Noorderlicht:
“Our collaboration with World Press Photo on What Have We Done? feels very fitting and necessary, especially here in Groningen. Since the late 1980s, Noorderlicht has grown in this city because there is space for critical thinking, collectivity, and imagination. These images have shaped our worldview and our understanding of each other. At the same time, we present Rauw Vermogen, in which seven young photographers from the North explore the important themes of our time. Together in the Niemeyer, these exhibitions give us the chance to look again at how we deal with the world around us.”