PHOTOBOOK OF THE YEAR
Book signings
Henk Wildschut
Rooted
Self-published
Amsterdam, 2019
Henk Wildschut’s book about the refugee crisis, Rooted, presents a unique approach to this critical and timely topic. The photographs offer an intimate glimpse into the lives of migrants by documenting the makeshift gardens found in refugee camps. While the camps themselves were intended to serve as temporary accommodations, they have become adoptive homes. The micro-gardens are often little more than repurposed oil drums, empty paint buckets planted with flowers, or a few small vegetable patches. Even so, they serve as beacons of hope and consolation for residents, who find purpose in tending to these strips of soil. Changes in trim size of the pages allow the desert landscape of one camp to meld into another, reinforcing the similarities between different refugee camps; the text interweaves stories of the people who tend the gardens, with botanical information about plants depicted. “You can see little moments of beauty in the midst of not-so-great places,” says Milter. “There have been so many projects about the refugee crisis; this one is really smart and different.”