(published in Südlink, the North-South-magazine of the Inkota-network, 09/2011, p.32 >>, originally in German >>)
"Clothing" is the name of a series of Dutch photographer Judith Quax - just this. Clothing is also what is visible on her puristic photographies: shirts and jeans on a deserted beach. Sand and water infiltrate the sleeves, inflate the trunk and take the shape of the body clad in those clothings just yet.
"Walking at a beach in Senegal, I noticed that there were lots of washed up clothing", Quax wrote about her 2009 series. "I was wondering about what happened to the people who wore them." Resulting from this: Images of absence that refrain from showing the essence - therein lies their silent terror. Invisible the people who wore these clothes just yet. Invisible their fate at sea. Invisible the forces that took their lives, even before the sea brought death: Was it dictatorial and corrupt regimes? Civil wars? Natural disasters?
Rather not: The beach belongs to the fishing village of Yoff, near the Senegalese capital Dakar. For centuries, the sea supplied the residents with food and work. But since European trawlers are depleting West African fish stocks, the sailors are left with nothing but the perspective to sell their boats and to risk a last journey: towards the Canary Islands, the outpost of Europe in the Atlantic.
The disembodied portraits of "Clothing" seem to continue Judith Quax' first Senegal series: For her 2007 "Immigrants" she captured the abandoned rooms of young migrants. Lumpy mattresses, fluttering curtains, an everted shirt in the surf: Quax shows West Africa as an abandoned place.
This aesthetic of absence also illustrates the fundamental nature of African migration to Europe: From the moment they leave, the migrants become invisible, clandestine, illegal. Even those of them who have reached the "Fortress Europe" without adversities and without being noticed, live here in secret, without doctors, social support or legal representation - the European public being fully aware of that.
Quax' series plays with this double awareness: We are shocked by the contrast between the colorful clothing reposing in the surf and their deadly message - and yet our inhumane immigration policies will continue. The residents of Yoff will even have been able to assign the garment to friends and neighbors - and yet they will board overcrowded boats again.
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