No Man's Land
Daniel Chatard
In his photo project "Niemandsland", Daniel Chatard deals with the question of what effects the extraction of lignite in the Rhineland and the decades-long power influence of the energy company RWE have on the villages threatened by this conflict. In the process, the young photographer has been involved for several years with the people fighting resettlement and destruction in the Rhineland. "I'm particularly interested in how the remaining people are reshaping their villages and communities, but also how those who have already been resettled are coming to terms with the loss of their old homes." With the help of a book dummy, the photographer wants to turn his photos into a platform where he invites those affected to share their experiences and enter into dialogue with each other.
Daniel Chatard (*1996) is a Franco-German documentary photographer working on long-term projects related to the topics of environment, climate change and power structures. He is interested in how these issues manifest themselves in the physical space. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hanover in 2021. Since 2018 he has been freelancing for ZEIT and National Geographic among others. 2018 he did an exchange semester in Journalism and Photojournalism at the Tomsk State University in Russia. Since 2021 Daniel is doing his master’s degree in Photography and Society at the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague. Coming from a background of photojournalism, he established for his practice the term of the “involved documentary”, indicating that he acknowledges the relationships between himself and the subjects he tries to understand through a visual approach, instead of assuming the position of an outside observer. This means that the process of exposing himself to the issues he researches on is a crucial part of his practice.