Nicole Segers
Blood and Honey
Encounters at the borders of the Balkans.
‘Do you know what Balkan means?’ Ajla asks as we drive up on hairpin bends. She leans forward from the back seat. ‘It comes from Turkish,’ she explains. Below us, Tetovo is getting smaller and smaller. ‘Bal means honey and kan blood.‘ She smiles. ‘We are the land of blood and honey.’
For almost twenty years, documentary photographer Nicole Segers and writer and historian Irene van der Linde have been traveling through the periphery of Europe and turned it into a trilogy.
Irene van der Linde & Nicole Segers
Works available
Blood and Honey Rab, Croatia
€950 - Giclée print 40x60 cm – descending – Fine art Hahnemühle Bamboo paper pasted on 2 mm dibond - aluminum suspension profile
Exhibition Blood and Honey at Museum Valkhof Nijmegen 2022
In the footsteps of British journalist Rebecca West, who traveled through, the formely Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1937, for her book Black Lamb and Gray Falcon, we arrived on the island of Rab in the Adriatic Sea. West describes her arrival exactly as we experienced it 75 years later: 'The sea was green and hard as glass; the crests of the waves were chevaux-de-frise between us and a horizon of pure, very pale green light and dark bronze islands. Our destination, the Isle of Rab, lay before us, its mountains bare as Ark, its shores green as spring itself.”
Blood and Honey Ohrid, North-Macedonia
€1.250 - Giclée print 50x75 cm – descending – Fine art Hahnemühle Bamboo paper pasted on 2 mm dibond - aluminum suspension profile
Exhibition Blood and Honey at Museum Valkhof Nijmegen 2022
Right across the magical Lake Ohrid is the border between North Macedonia and Albania, which lies on the other side. It is early March, Ohrid is still quiet. The residents are preparing for the new season. In two months it will again be full of tourists like every year. Behind us lies the early medieval town built against a rock, a labyrinth of narrow streets and 365 Eastern Orthodox churches – one for each day.
Blood and Honey Tetovo, North-Macedonia
€1.250 - Giclée print 40x60 cm – descending – Fine art Hahnemühle Bamboo paper pasted on 2 mm dibond - aluminum suspension profile
Exhibition Blood and Honey at Museum Valkhof Nijmegen 2022
Tetovo is the unofficial capital of the Albanians in North Macedonia who make up just under a third of the population. In the center of this mountain town is the neighborhood that consists entirely of bridal shops. Every August thousands of Albanians from the diaspora return to their homeland for the so-called wedding season. Getting married is incredibly important in Albanian culture, not just the bride and groom but all family members and guests are expected to look spectacular. For the penniless Tetovo it is a revenue model
Ferry of Istanbul Kabataş, Istanbul
€1.550 Dibond - 50x120 cm - Alu frame with white border
Exhibition Blood and Honey at Museum Valkhof Nijmegen 2022
Next to the Mimar Sinan Art Academy in Istanbul is a statue of a headless woman. A magical appearance between the everyday scenes. Next to it is a cart of a seller of hot rice with chickpeas, which he drives every evening along the banks of the Bosphorus. In the background the balloon shooting gallery. For five lira you can try three times to blast as many balloons as possible with a rifle. No mean feat with the constant winds from the Black Sea to the north or those from the Sea of Marmara.
Blood and Honey Cetingrad, Kroatia
€950 - Giclée print 40x60 cm – descending – Fine art Hahnemühle Bamboo paper pasted on 2 mm dibond - aluminum suspension profile
Exhibition Blood and Honey at Museum Valkhof Nijmegen 2022
The town of Cetingrad is located right on the border between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has been our new EU external border since 2013. This area, the Kraijna, was heavily fought over during the Serb-Croat War in the 1990s. The consequences of this violence and the subsequent population movements are still visible everywhere along the border. Both in the broken houses and in the religious symbols that are often the first to speak up.
Blood and Honey Belgrade Serbia
€950 - Giclée print 40x60 cm – descending – Fine art Hahnemühle Bamboo paper pasted on 2 mm dibond - aluminum suspension profile
Exhibition Blood and Honey at Museum Valkhof Nijmegen 2022
The former capital of Yugoslavia and now of Serbia, Belgrade is brimming with nostalgia. Time seems to have stood still in the famous Kalemegdan Park, from which you can also enjoy a beautiful view of both the Sava and the Danube. Ice cream and cotton candy stalls and the famous zoo can be found here. The permanent bumper car tent appears to predate the wars of the 1990s.
In the 1990s, Yugoslavia violently disintegrated. Seven new countries emerged – all wanting to be part of the European Union – and countless new borders. In Blood and Honey, the third part of the trilogy, they look for the meaning of these boundaries by taking a similar journey as the British writer Rebecca West did in her magnum opus Black Lamb and Gray Falcon (1942)
With their car they are driving on quiet roads, arid plateaus, through desolate villages and dark rock gorges. They visit cities with magical names like Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Skopje, Ohrid and Tirana, interviewing the people they come accross.
Exhibition ‘Blood and Honey: Encounters at the Borders of the Balkans, Museum Valkhof 2021.
They depict, in an exceptional combination of photography and text, the world of ordinary people with an extraordinary history. People who dream, fight, fear, struggle with their fate, with the fragmentation of their world, a danger that also threatens societies elsewhere in Europe. Segers' photos tell a story of unity and separation, visible and invisible borders.
Exhibition ‘Blood and Honey: Encounters at the Borders of the Balkans, Museum Valkhof 2021.
“If you want to know what's going on in Europe, you have to go to the Balkans,” says Nicole.
Winner of the Dutch Photo Book Award 2021, category ‘Best text/photo book’. Nominated for the top ten most beautiful photo books of 2020 by de Volkskrant.