Nicola Brandt: The Distance Within

From German colonialism to the post-apartheid present, Brandt’s photographs present new views of Namibia that intertwine its many histories

Featuring images and video stills made over more than a decade, The Distance Within reflects on photographer Nicola Brandt’s (born 1983) German and Namibian ancestry and deconstructs certain established ways of seeing Namibia. Brandt traveled the country extensively, documenting landscapes and people, structures and encounters, to reveal ensnared histories of German colonialism, National Socialism and apartheid. Markers of these histories range from the ephemeral and private, such as a dilapidated mound of stones as a roadside memorial, to official sites of remembrance and resistance, particularly for colonial atrocities. Alongside her images, Brandt assembles texts by scholars in photography, postcolonial cultures, memory and genocide studies, as well as archival material, to understand enduring blind spots. The result is an intersectional argument in favor of reclaiming suppressed Indigenous stories and identities, undoing romantic notions of whiteness and, ultimately, illuminating what has not been visible.