revisited Black.Light
Blacklight is based on the reports by Pedro Mendes (text) and Wolf Böwig (image) on the Charles Taylor wars in Liberia and the rest of West Africa between 1996 and 2003. In 2012, graphic novelists used this as a basis to create several episodes about individual people and actions that impressively illustrate the destruction caused by Taylor’s warlord rule.
In the planned revisited version, reports and episodes will be expanded to include contributions in words and pictures from today’s perspective. They understand Blacklight as a prism of destabilizing and devastating conflicts of global significance that are embedded in larger contexts.
Habbo Knoch
01 ÜBER GEWALT BERICHTEN
02 NEU: TEXT [ PEDRO ROSA MENDES ]
03 SCHWARZE SONNE
04 DASIA: ALS ICH HIERHER ZURÜCK KAM …
05 PEANUT BUTTER
06 MATRIOSCHKAS / IN OUR HANDS [ JOSHUA CRAZE ]
07 DIE ZONE
08 DASIA: GOTT WAR GUT ZU UNS
09 DER GRIECHE ADAMAS
10 NEU: TEXT [ MARKO DINIĆ ]
11 MIKADO
12 DER GLAUBE DER VÖGEL
November 2024
01 Über Gewalt berichten
Illustration: George Pratt | Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Foto: Wolf Böwig | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
16 Doppelseiten
One night in Florida: The opening essay for BlackLight is an intimate reflection about war reporting. The foundational idea for BLP was documenting on the ground the civil wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire. That program was delivered in fragments of reportage, each opportunity re-invested in the next field assignment. All the while, the authors kept their eyes on the prize: BLP`s running thread is about the brutal forms and layers of violence against civilians in those wars. This essay puts in perspective the mechanism by which reporting with empathy inevitably pulls the reporter to communion in that pain. Let us then start the journey. It´s late night at the miserable hotel Florida and darkness reaches us from all corners of Monrovia. All demons are here, we marshalled them all day, all week. It´s our routine, devotedly. “What a world”. There´s destruction everywhere; worse, there´s desecration in everyone. It gets to us. “The nails, the spear, and man’s un – pity – ing scorn.”
02 Neu: Text [ Pedro Rosa Mendes ] + Tagebuch
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Collage: Wolf Böwig
Umfang: 2 Doppelseiten (geplant)
+ Tagebuch/Collage
Wolf Böwig, 2022
+ Tagebuch/Collage
Wolf Böwig, 2022
03 Schwarze Sonne
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: Thierry van Hasselt | Foto: Wolf Böwig | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
6 Doppelseiten
Black Sun: People in Man, Côte d’Ivoire, knew when Charles Taylor would transit through this rear-base during his bush wars: lights would go off across the city. The blackout would then follow the warlord westwards, enveloping his motorcade as Taylor headed to Nimba County across the border with Liberia. Who´s this master of darkness? A black sun radiating negative light. Darkness expands as he conspires and orders to kill, plunder, enslave and destroy for his gain.
04 Dasia: als ich hierher zurück kam …
Interview mit Dasia | Transcript: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: Stefano Ricci | Zeitungsausschnitte | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
3 Doppelseiten, zum Teil auf Transparent
Dasia: When I first got here: A master course by Dasia Masaquoi– in memoriam! Dasia, a retired mining engineer turned “real estate agent”, lectures with eloquence and analytical rigour the process of moral unravelling behind the destruction of Liberia. This is a spoken essay, collected and edited from several encounters with Dasia, walking down Broad Street in Monrovia. His memories, his despair, his faith, his humanity, his fury – in his own words. “You see fear. Raw fear. And that raw fear is turned and transcended into power. This violence, you go into it and you don’t question yourself again.” His hope, still; like a boy with a happy dime in his pocket. So speaks the victim…
05 Peanut Butter
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: David von Bassewitz | Foto: Wolf Böwig | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
9 Doppelseiten
I will play a movie: Are we “in the wrong place at the wrong time”? That´s how, years later, Senator Adolphos Dolo, aka General Peanut Butter, would explain to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission how he ended up as one of Taylor´s most loyal and commanders. When we fell into his hands, coming from LURD controlled areas across St. Johns River, Peanut Butter was the last man standing: a general contemplating defeat, encircled in the forest up in Nimba with his army of child soldiers. “They’re not real children. These types have seen their family killed before their eyes and the ones who killed them didn’t even bother to take them away. Sometimes I can only think that I’m going to lose my mind. Why do I have to be here?” Eloquent oral history, political history, moral history, So speaks the perpetrator…
06 Matrioschkas + In our Hands [ Joshua Craze ]
Text „Matrioschkas“: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Text „In our Hands“: Joshua Craze | Foto und Collage: Wolf Böwig | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
20 Doppelseiten
Matrioschkas: The battle cry of the rebels in Sierra Leone during the advance on Freetown in January 1999 had a terrifying simplicity about it: “No Living Thing”. A human being was not worth living, or did not ask for more remorse, than a chicken, a dog, a goat, perhaps because each soldier was previously turned into a beast, emptied of any values considered vaguely human. Or the combatants were even prevented for learning those values. It is the obvious case of the swarm of children caught in the war machine, of fighters methodically alienated by drugs, abuse or indoctrination.
07 Die Zone
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: Nic Klein | Foto: Wolf Böwig | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
9 Doppelseiten
The Zone: Behind the frontline with Abu Musa Keita, aka Commander Alpha Mike from LURD. There´s little left from Gbarnga, a strategic outpost in LURD`s advance towards Monrovia. “Careful, get his weapon!” Alpha Mike rules over a town in the edge with drunken and drugged teen soldiers. „Get out of here! You listening or do I shoot you?” What´s left to reconstruct? From the rubble, people make the triage by hand: bricks in one pile, window frames in another, wooden elsewhere for fire.
08 Dasia: Gott war gut zu uns
Interview mit Dasia | Transcript: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: Stefano Ricci | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
3 Doppelseiten, zum Teil auf Transparent
Dasia: God was good: Dasia´s reflection on live and let die. “God was good to us, you know? When the killing was on, it was dry. When it stopped, the rainy season would start to wash all the blood away.” Whose hands are to take justice?
09 Kapitel hinzufügen: Der Grieche Adamas
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes
1 Doppelseiten (geplant)
Carbon exists in two basic forms in nature: diamonds and graphite. These are fundamentally different in how their respective crystal structures (the spatial disposition and linkages between atoms). Graphite forms in a hexagonal system, but the links or network between two parallel plans are extremely fragile: like a pack of cards, each card is strong, but the cards will slide over each other, or even fall off the pack. That´s why graphite is the stuff of pencils and brushes. In diamonds, by contrast, each carbon atom is joined to four other carbon atoms by strong covalent bonds. Diamonds are so hard due to the need to break very strong covalent bonds operating in 3-dimensions. In a war fought for diamonds, fighters in Sierra Leone carved “RUF” on the chests of civilians and amputated the fingers and/or hands of those who attempted to vote. Which calligraphy lasts longer?
Der Grieche Adamas
Kohlenstoff (chemisches Element C), die Grundlage des uns bekannten Lebens, kommt in der Natur im wesentlichen in zwei Formen vor: als Diamant und als Graphit, von Schreibern und Zeichnern gemeinhin als „Kohle“ bezeichnet, da man mit ihr schreibt. Der grundlegende Unterschied zwischen Diamant und Graphit besteht in seiner Kristallstruktur, also in der Anordnung und den Verbindungen zwischen den Kohlenstoffatomen im Raum.
Nach einem gleichen Plan sind die Verbindungen beim Graphit sehr stark und symmetrisch zu einem Hexagon angeordnet (man sagt mithin, der Graphit kristallisiere in einem hexagonalen System), die Verbindungen zwischen den Atomen zweier paralleler Ebenen aber sind extrem schwach ausgeprägt.
Beim Diamanten dagegen sind die Atomverbindungen des Kohlenstoffs extrem stark, die Abstände zwischen den Atomen sehr kurz. Wichtig dabei ist, dass in der Struktur des Diamanten jedes Atom mit vier anderen Atomen verbunden ist, die sich an den Scheitelpunkten eines Tetraeders befinden. Diese Struktur heißt tetraedrische Koordination. Diese ganz eigentümlichen Verbindungen verleihen dem Diamanten außergewöhnliche physikalische und chemische Eigenschaften, was ihm seitens der griechischen Naturwissenschaftler den Namen adamas, der „Unbesiegbare“, eingebracht hat. Der griechische Ausdruck bildet den Ursprung des lateinischen adiamantum und des portugiesischen diamante.
Die räumliche Anordnung und Wiederholung der Kohlenstoffatome in einem Diamanten ist in einer kubischen Symmetrie organisiert (im Gegensatz zum Graphit, der wie gesagt in einem hexagonalen System kristallisiert). Dies ist die strukturelle Differenz, die diese beiden polymorphen Kohlenstoffminerale unterscheidet, Minerale mit der gleichen chemischen Zusammensetzung also, jedoch einer unterschiedlichen Kristallstruktur (und mithin unterschiedlichen physikalischen, chemischen, etc. Eigenschaften).
Es gibt noch eine weitere Modifikation dieses gediegenen Elements (als gediegene Elemente werden Minerale bezeichnet, deren Zusammensetzung aus einem chemischen Element besteht, im allgemeinen Gold, Silber, Platin, Schwefel), das Lonsdaleit heißt, in einem Hexagonalsystem kristallisiert und als Mineral äußerst selten ist. Es kommt in mikroskopisch kleinen Exemplaren vor, die sich in Gegenden mit sehr heftigen Meteoritenimpakten bilden, so wie in Tonguska in Russland im Jahr 1908. Diese seltene Modifikation erhielt ihren Namen zu Ehren der Kristallographin Kathleen Lonsdale.
Aus der Kristallstruktur des Graphits resultiert eine Brüchigkeit, die Spaltbarkeit genannt wird; aufgrund eben dieser Spaltbarkeit zersplittert Graphit so gut in verschiedene Richtungen. Das erlaubt seine Verwendung auf dem Papier, in von zahllosen, gespaltenen Graphitteilchen gebildeten Linien.
Nach unserer Ankunft gingen wir auf den Markt. Ich kaufte das, was ich normalerweise als erstes benötige: ein Heft und einen Bleistift.
10 Neu: Text [ Marko Dinić ] + Foto-Serie
Text: Marko Dinić | Foto: Wolf Böwig
Umfang: ca. 3 bis 4 Doppelseiten (geplant)
+ Text von Marko Dinić
+ Foto-Serie All under Heaven
11 Mikado
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: Dieter Jüdt | Foto: Wolf Böwig | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
7 Doppelseiten
Mikado: Desecration is also about violating nature, logging where ancestral spirits inhabited ancestral forests. North of Parallel Nine, in Northwestern Côte d’Ivoire, illegal logging and timber smuggling feed both the regional war economy and the global appetite for exotic wood. The hostilities against civilians start with a war against forests´ ecological, cultural and spiritual value. Follow the prospector. He´ll guide us to the tallest tree: it´s a sacred century old. You need many men to fully embrace those 100 years. It´s all brought down in few minutes, with the guttural noise of a dying whale.
12 Der Glaube der Vögel
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
2 Doppelseiten
Birds of pray: How brave is non-violent resistance when war is raging all around you. A group of women has held weekly ecumenical demonstrations for peace at the airport in Monrovia, defiant of artillery and shooting.
“What’ we want?” – “Peace!!!” “When?” – “Now!!!”
One woman, apart from the group, falls to her knees and lies prostrate on the ground, trembling in a quiet, dry weeping. She murmurs names, and the names drive her to despair.
“We women are natural peacemakers. We have overcome our differences, because we have all suffered from the same crimes,”
13 City of Rest
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: David von Bassewitz | Foto: Wolf Böwig | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
7 Doppelseiten
City of Rest: An evangelical pastor opened this house in Freetown to those drowned into addition during the war. “There are Rastas, druggies, hippies, junkies, dreads, soldiers, rebels, thieves, murderers–” They cleanse themselves through gospel but there´s no other palliative: they are chained to bed frames and poles for the average purge of four to six weeks. “This is hard, man. People aren’t born to be in chains,” There´s a commotion outside, a procession approaches the gate: another escapee, chained to a metal chair, is brought back to God. Salvation is hell.
14 50 cent
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
1 Doppelseite
50 Cent: Rape, sexual slavery, outrages upon personal dignity, violence to life, health and physical or mental well-being, in particular cruel treatment, are crimes against humanity. Civilians were primary targets in Taylor´s wars; women and girls paid the heaviest price, and the legacy unfolds long after the hostilities. ”Elle est malade…”
15 Die Liebe zur Freiheit
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
2 Doppelseiten
Die Liebe zur Freiheit: Kofi Woods, a leading voice among Liberian human rights defenders, speaks from exile in Sierra Leone about accountability, reconciliation, and closure if Liberia is to build a peaceful future. Woods is also unsparing about the roots of social and political violence in a settler/colonial society. On how hatred festers in ethnic and social segregation. “The love of liberty brought us here”? The Liberian anthem should be, “The love of liberty met us here”.
16 Neu: Text [ Habbo Knoch ]
Text: Habbo Knoch
Umfang: 1 Doppelseite (geplant)
+ Text von Habbo Knoch
17 Mein Traum war
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: Benjamin Flao | Foto: Wolf Böwig | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
12 Doppelseiten
My dream was: Amputees are an ugly, literal memory of the horrors of the war in Sierra Leone. Many preferred to exile them out of sight, out of town. In the Bombuna Mountains, in a remote ghetto for amputees. Balá Cissé knows how to drink water as dogs do, “just with my mouth.” Cissé was shoved against a fence, where rebel fighters extended his arms on top of the wood. And the saber came down twice. “God made me a man. God took me back to my childhood.”
18 Dasia: Das gute Gemetzel
Interview mit Dasia | Transcript: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: Stefano Ricci | Zeitungsausschnitte | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
6 Doppelseiten, zum Teil auf Transparent
Dasia: The right bloodshed: Dasia’s moral trajectory comes down to one psalm of his own: if the blood of one man prevents the blood of a thousand, that’s the right bloodbath. Were he younger, boy would he be bad. “I want blood for blood. I don’t want justice.” A challenging closing argument that brings down the aspirations of reconciliation and moral high ground against the political economy of justice: justice is also a function of individual liberty and voice. You need a civic critical mass for that.
19 Neu: Text [ Susana Moreira Marques ] + Collage
Text: Susana Moreira Marques | Collage: Wolf Böwig
Umfang: 3 Doppelseite (geplant)
+ Text von Susana Moreira Marques
+ 3 Collagen [ Kontaktabzug ]
20 Morie, Prinz der Toten
Text: Pedro Rosa Mendes | Illustration: Danijel Žeželj | Foto: Wolf Böwig | Layout: Christoph Ermisch
7 Doppelseiten
Morie: Morie is the superlative in BLP: the “story” that sets and challenges the boundaries of humanity throughout the project. Morie was the only survivor of an all-day- long massacre of his entire village (1200 people). We traced the boy down in the swamps of Pujehun in 2003 and later we visited his teenager persona: the trauma lives on and came of age… “Here, in the middle of these stakes, were about 150 bodies,” the old man explains. “Shall we dig?”
21 Team etc.
Umfang: 3 Doppelseiten (geplant)
Susana Moreira Marques
writer & journalist
born 1976, Portugal
„There are things that one can no longer write about as used to be possible in the past. Something changes. First the eyes, then the heart – or the senses, or whatever our ancestors called the soul – and finally the hands.“
Susana Moreira Marques studied Communication Sciences at the NOVA University of Lisbon and works as a journalist for Público and Jornal de Negócios. She has been awarded several journalism prizes, including the UNESCO ‚Human Rights and Integration‘ Journalism Award (Portugal) and the AMI Journalism against Indifference Prize. Today she also writes for film and television. In 2013 her first book “ Now and at the Hour of our Death“, she accompanied a palliative care team to portray dying people and their relatives who confront us with questions about our own mortality.
George Pratt
Illustrator, Photographer & Filmmaker
born 1960, USA.
„I wish artists had something more to say than just copying what they like. Of course, not everything has to be protest, but I wonder where all the work is that speaks out against hate, racism, war, etc.“
Batman is the main reason George Pratt became an artist. As a child he spent a lot of time in hospital. That was when the Batman series first aired on TV and he became addicted to it. His family then provided him with numerous comics and sparked a passion that never left him. Many of Pratt’s works deal with war, trauma and the psychological consequences of violence. In his first graphic novel, „Enemy ace: War Idyll“, he lets two soldiers from the First World War and the Vietnam War meet. They reflect on similar experiences, even though they fought in wars that were decades apart.
George Pratt studied at the Pratt Institute in New York and is now one of the best contemporary artists in the field of comics and graphic novels. Using special printing techniques such as monotype or acrylic painting with a rubber roller, he finds an individual language for each project. His numerous awards include the Eisner Award and an honor at the New York International Independent Film Festival for the documentary film „See You In Hell, Blind Boy.“
Wolf Böwig
Photographer & Initiator of Blacklight
born 1964, Germany
“The worst thing about mass death in war and crisis zones is not the grief of the survivors. It is the fact that we are increasingly unable to grasp the full extent of violence.”
Where photography reaches its limit as a lens to describe life in violence-ridden regions and for documenting collective trauma, photographer Wolf Böwig begins his work. In the spirit of „Extended Photography,“ he expands his documentary images with text, painting, silkscreen printing, and memorabilia into multilayered collages, boldly experimenting at the edges of reception. The boundaries he crosses are those we ourselves construct about our ideas and the causes, effects, and consequences of violence. Challenging these notions courageously is Böwig’s compelling offer.
His work can be described as a deep dive because he does not stop at the surface, does not depict the obvious, and does not reproduce clichés. In a world too often dominated by sensational headlines, he steps on the brakes. He takes the time to focus on fragile regions, on humanitarian crises, and illuminates the perspectives of both victims and perpetrators with equal intensity. This is not humanity à la carte but humanity on equal terms.
Wolf Böwig studied mathematics and philosophy before beginning his career as a photographer in 1988, documenting conflict regions in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, France, Guinea-Bissau, India, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, East Timor, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Zambia.
Böwig’s photo reports and collages are regularly published in leading international newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian, Le Monde, The New York Times, NZZ, mare, Publica, Stern, The Independent, and Visão, and have received numerous awards.
Christoph Ermisch
Layout, Design & Website
born 1965, Germany
„The greatest possible freedom with which all participants immerse themselves passionately in the unimaginable horror in their own writing and with which all the elements ultimately come together to form a coherent narrative is what is extraordinary about Blacklight.“
Christoph Ermisch is the interface where all Blacklight’s components come together. As a designer, he has accompanied Blacklight from the very beginning and continues to shape it today with his unmistakable design, which is reflected in the structure, rhythm, choice of color and breaks on all project levels. At the 15th International Comic Salon Erlangen in 2012, he was first swept away by the creative energy of the Blacklight illustrators and developed an artistic approach that puts the genres of photography, reportage, collage, factual text and illustration into an effective dialogue.
Christoph Ermisch studied industrial design at the Hanover University of Applied Sciences and at Brunel University in London. He founded his own design office in Hanover in 1998: ermisch | Büro für Gestaltung. Ermisch is a member of the design group METAmoderne .
Habbo Knoch
historian
born 1969, Germany
Habbo Knoch studied history, philosophy, political science and sociology in Göttingen, Bielefeld, Jerusalem and Oxford. From 2008 to 2014 he was managing director of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation and headed the Bergen-Belsen Memorial. Since 2014 he has been teaching modern and contemporary history at the Historical Institute of the University of Cologne. His research and interests focus on German and European social and political history of the 20th century, the cultural and experiential history of modernity since 1880 and the transnational history of political orders and social systems in the 20th century.
„Blacklight makes it clear how an unstable world order has been characterized by closely intertwined violence for more than three decades, despite all international pacification. Wars between states, civil wars, terrorist violence, the suppression of regime opponents […] have buried the vision of a peaceful world after the end of the Cold War.“
Nic Klein
illustrator & comic artist
born 1978, Germany
„There’s always a human factor in good science fiction stories, about what it means to be human – wrapped up in a universe where you can do anything.“
Thor, Captain America, Punisher and other comic heroes – they all feel right at home on Nic Klein’s drawing table. Because no matter whether science fiction or historical material: he is appreciated by his fans worldwide for his gift of visually bringing complex characters and epic stories to life and has thus earned himself a place among the most internationally renowned comic artists.
Nic Klein studied at the Kassel Art Academy and now works as a freelance illustrator for major American comic publishers such as Marvel, DC Comics and Panini. With the Viking story „VIKING“ and the science fiction western „DRIFTER“, the artist also has his own comic series together with the author Ivan Brandon.
Marko Dinić
writer
born 1988, Austria
„[…] aligning the community with imaginary problems and, ultimately, imaginary enemies is an old tune that the powerful still seem not to have tired of playing. The young people, or those who grow up within such conflicts, are either just as exposed to these toxic narratives, adopt their parents‘ behavior patterns, or begin to take responsibility for something that they could not and cannot do anything about.“
Marko Dinić spent his childhood and youth in Belgrade. He studied German and Jewish cultural history in Salzburg and now lives and works as a writer in Vienna. Since 2012, his poems and prose texts have appeared in magazines and anthologies. In 2019, his debut novel „The Good Days“ was published. In it, he tells „twenty years after the bombing of Belgrade, of a traumatized generation that feels understood neither at home nor abroad, that tries to understand its own past and struggles for a future.“ Marko Dinic is co-founder of the art collective Bureau du Grand Mot and organizer of the INTERLAB – Festival for Transdisciplinary Art and Music.
Ines John
writer
born 1977, Germany
Ines John studied political science, history and sociology with a focus on conflict theory and human rights. Ines works as a freelance copywriter and assists companies with press activities and public relations. She is passionate about documentary photography and graphic novels. „Black.Light has the power to overcome the limits of cognition and create new ways of understanding. This project is so outstanding in 100 different ways – it’s a book that belongs on every bookshelf or bedside table,“ she says.
Danijel Žeželj
Illustrator & graphic novel author
born 1966, Croatia.
„There is often something threatening in my work, a sense of tension and drama mixed with melancholy and nostalgia. But I also firmly believe in resilience and hope, and I would like to believe that the dark side of my work awakens the desire and need to create, the will to fight and survive, and to strive for light and joy. […] One way to deal with darkness is to use it as motivation to do something good.“
Danijel Žeželj’s pictures thrive on the in-between – the strong contrast between light and shadow. In his works he often deals with existential questions such as social injustice and manages like hardly any other artist to create an intense atmosphere with just a few lines, hatching and very minimal use of color. His drawings are reminiscent of dark film sequences that, when viewed, evoke deep emotions.
Danijel Žeželj studied classical painting, sculpture and printmaking at the Akademija Likovnih Umjetnosti in Zagreb. His comics and illustrations have been published by DC Comics, Marvel, Harper’s Magazine, San Francisco Guardian and others. Since 1997 he has also been creating multimedia performances in which he combines live music and live painting in an emotional way. In 2001 he founded the publishing house and graphic workshop „Petikat“. Most recently Žeželj worked on a series of animated films for the film studio „Zagreb Film“.
Thierry van Hasselt
Illustrator
born 1969, Belgium
Thierry Van Hasselt is a Belgian artist who has been experimenting with the boundaries between comics, animation, set design, and literature for over twenty years. His works are created in collaboration with choreographer Karine Pontier and writer Mylène Lauzon, among others. Thierry masterfully visualizes emotions using often unconventional design techniques, ensuring that his work leaves no one untouched.
Thierry Van Hasselt studied comics at the Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels. After graduating, he co-founded the alternative comic publisher Fréon with friends in 1994, which merged with the French publisher Amok in 2001 to form FRÉMOK. In addition to his work as an illustrator, Thierry now teaches comic drawing at the school where his career began.
“Drawing is more than a language. For me, it is a matter of direct emotion.”
Joshua Craze
Journalist & Author
born 1982, England
“On the way to Wau, I try to take notes in the dark. I am convinced, with the dedication of a fanatic, that all this must be recorded and that this documentation can somehow save lives here. Save them from what? I don’t know. I am not religious.”
How do people find their place in a world where there is no hope for a fulfilled life? In his writings about conflict regions like South Sudan, author Joshua Craze explores this question, seeking answers on the ground. He delves deep into the wound, not only tracing the causes of traumatic experiences of violence, but also with razor-sharp words, exposing the constraints of Western donor countries‘ humanitarian aid, which traps people in dependency on emergency assistance, thereby depriving them of any long-term prospect of a dignified, self-determined life.
Joshua Craze studied at the Universities of Oxford, Amsterdam, and the University of California, Berkeley, and earned a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He was an Assistant Professor and Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago. Since 2010, Joshua Craze has been working as a conflict researcher in South Sudan and other conflict zones for various organizations, including Human Rights Watch and the Small Arms Survey. He is currently writing a book on war, bureaucracy, and silence in those regions.
Dieter Jüdt
illustrator
born 1963, Germany
Dieter Jüdt studied illustration and book design at the Trier University of Applied Sciences and has published several illustrated books, artist books and some graphic novels. He illustrates and designs books for international publishers, newspapers and magazines such as „Spex – Magazine for Pop Culture“ and Mare. He is a member of Poste Aérienne, a German-Belgian-Korean artist and graphic designer collective. He is also the editor of the reading book „45 – A Single Cover Album“ about illustration and pop music and the author of a basic book on visual storytelling. Together with Andreas Rauth and Falk Nordmann, he curates Jitter’s Wunderblock, an interdisciplinary series of events on illustration and art.
Pedro Rosa Mendes
Journalist & Writer
born 1968, Portugal
“That’s what it’s about: people trapped in a moment, which is at the same time both past and present. The moment when the rupture occurred, and fear crept in.”
Reports of violence are often hard to digest. However, Pedro Rosa Mendes‘ war reportage stands out as lyrical diamonds in this monotonous litany, shaped under the pressure of armed conflicts, hunger, disasters, and hopelessness. Tirelessly, he seeks words for the unspeakable horror in places where language has been lost—a horror that echoes long in those who can still feel. How can the past be healed when the present lies in darkness? In his reports and books, Mendes gives voice to the people he meets, approaching an unspeakable reality through their biographies.
Pedro Rosa Mendes studied law at the University of Coimbra and began writing his first articles during his studies. As a correspondent for the Portuguese daily newspaper Público, he regularly reported from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Afghanistan. He also worked for several years in East Timor for the Portuguese news agency Lusa. His first book, „Baia dos Tigres“ (Bay of Tigers), was published in 1999. In this book, he describes his hitchhiking journey across Angola, a country torn apart by civil war. He masterfully intertwines this adventure with the colonial history of his homeland, creating a literary travel narrative in the tradition of Polish reportage legend Ryszard Kapuściński. He has remained true to this narrative style to this day.
Benjamin Flao
illustrator & comic book author
born 1975, France
Benjamin Flao is known for his socially and culturally profound stories, which are often based on his own observations in countries such as Africa or South America. Sketchy lines, strong hatching, lively textures and an impressionistic play of light and shadow are characteristic of his drawing style. There is a touch of melancholy that lies over many of his pictures and comics, making them haunting contemporary witnesses.
„So, this little theater of contradictions is a pretty ideal place to tell stories, because it also talks about our world and about life in general. And my head is full of contradictions too. A story is, so to speak, an extension of what you have in your head.“
At the age of 14, Benjamin Flao left school and enrolled at the École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc in Belgium. Two years later, he went to Lyon to specialize in comics, cartoons and illustrations at the famous École Emile Cohl. Since 1998, Flaó has made several trips by motorbike through Africa, particularly through Burkina Faso and Eritrea, which he documented in drawings. His stays in Kenya inspired him to write the visually stunning graphic novel “ Kililana Song“ – his first own comic book publication.
David von Bassewitz
Illustrator & Graphic Novelist
born 1975, Germany
„For the Blacklight project, I began experimenting with toner and nitro thinner, creating grey washed surfaces and drawings on them with charcoal and chalk. The result was both flat and dynamic. It had an almost photographic, documentary character, but depending on the degree of abstraction of the drawing, it could also tip over into expressionism, nightmarishness.“
David von Bassewitz is one of the most influential illustrators of his generation. His graphic narratives are influenced by film, both in terms of image composition and editing. The narrative itself, as Bassewitz once described it, does not take place on a canvas or paper, but exclusively in the viewer’s mind.
Von Bassewitz studied film and media studies at the University of Erlangen and illustration at the University of Applied Sciences in Würzburg. In 2010 he was named Best Illustrator by the Art Directors Club Europe. His illustrations appear in Die Zeit, stern and Le Nouvel Observateur and have been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London, among others. He has been a lecturer at the Art Directors Club for Germany (ADC) since 2014. David von Bassewitz published his first graphic novel, “Vasmers Bruder”, in 2014.
Stefano Ricci
illustrator, comic author & musician
born 1966, Italy
Stefano Ricci resembles an explorer when he works on his sketches with a wide variety of materials such as oil pastels, adhesive tape and pencils, tracing paper and spray paint cans to form contours and plays of light or to emphasize blurriness. His works focus on topics such as everyday fears, the relationship between the individual and the environment or the search for identity. The stories are often fragmented, which leaves the recipient a lot of room for interpretation.
Since the mid-1980s, Stefano Ricci’s work has been published in international journals and magazines. His work focuses on comics and animated films, but he also works on theatre, dance and film productions. Since 1995, he has been managing the publishing house Edizioni Grafiche Squadro together with Giovanna Anceschi, which specializes in avant-garde comics and illustrations. Ricci has received several awards for his design and illustration projects and is co-founder of Sigaretten Edizioni. He teaches at the Università degli Studi di Udine, at the University of Applied Arts Hamburg and at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna.
„We have to leave the highways and venture onto country roads and forest paths if we want to experience unexpected perspectives.“
Finale Version Mai 2025
Wolf Böwig’s combination of image, art and word is exceptional. It allows multiple approaches to the humanistic dimension of suffering mass violence. The focus is not on the violence itself, but on the emptiness and destruction, but also on the resilience and will to survive of people who have become victims of international conflicts. Blacklight Revisited is about human dignity – it is a compelling offer to critically reflect on one’s own existence in the face of war and injury in post-colonial spaces of violence.
Habbo Knoch
