Stefan Boness, Germany
Stefan Boness lives in Berlin and Manchester, working as a photographer on a wide range of topics. He has not only documented the political Berlin with its protagonists and the right-wing populist movements in towns like Dresden or Cottbus, or traced the steps of Walter Benjamin. He also worked in Japan, and photographed landscapes of ruins, animal graveyards as well as Eritrean welders. With his book Flandern Fields he created a “photographic meditation on the battle fields of WWI”. He photographed architecture in places like Tel Aviv, Asmara, or Hoyerswerda. In 2015, Boness was awarded the first prize at the German photo competition ‘Rückblende’ for a photograph of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and has won a World Press Photo Award and a Fuji Euro Press Award.
They are peacefully demonstrating against something they do not want to make their peace with. They peacefully counter all hostilities and reprimands that the debate on climate change should be left to the experts. Is this a second Woodstock? No, it is more political. It is rather a second 1968, only more colourful, child-like and yet, despite the smiles, also terribly serious, persistent and stoical. The Generation Greta, the Generation Braces has succeeded in getting things moving. Is is a request for urgent procedure with soap-bubbles and felt-tip writings on hands and cheeks. It is a major ‘wake-up call’. A request to act. A pin cushion under the politicians’ backsides. “Make the world greater / greta again.” It is incredible what this captivating peace movement has initiated for planet Earth. Of course, nothing has been solved, but they have got the ball rolling. The outcome remains to be seen. It is already worth an entry in future history books. Stefan Boness has captured some moments of this movement with its cheerful dynamics, which is doing without classical marching orders, using homemade slogans and its optimistic ‘Save-the-world’ hype. Maybe THE peace movement of our times. (Text by Peter-Matthias Gaede)