Der Greif - Issue 19 by Zanele Muholi

Der Greif has invited Zanele Muholi, supported by Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, to guest-edit Issue 19.

The theme for the open call is “I Am Because of You, Mother Earth.”

You are the environment. Your body is a landscape, your face a geography, your breath an atmosphere. The water in your blood, the minerals in your bones, the soil that feeds you: all of it connects you to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. This is the oldest truth there is.

“It is not just me guest-editing: this issue of Der Greif is a shared process of making something beautiful and outstanding together.” Zanele Muholi

I Am Because of You, Mother Earth. – Curatorial statement by Zanele Muholi.

“Everything that we are is the environment. Water is part of the environment. Blood in your system is the environment. Your body as the landscape, that is a form of the environment. When you say environment, people would think of the landscape and it ends there. But you won't think of the elements and nuances that make this whole thing whole.

I could say this issue is about the constitution. But the constitution is the environment, and the environment is the landscape. And the landscape is the voice, and the voice is the community. And the community is something else. All of these things are interconnected in one way or the other. You are the environment.

A person could photograph their face and say: Look, the environment! My eyes are the north. My mouth is the south. My ears are east and west.

I really want to push people and challenge them. People are limited, and we keep on limiting ourselves. I want us to look at the environment way beyond just the physical space. I want people to think of environment as everything that lives in it.

All these things connect. Mother Earth in all of us.

Because of environment, I am. Because of you, I am. Because of them, I am.”

This issue wants to break brackets, between ages, between disciplines, between the global South and the global North. It asks you to challenge yourself, to think like a child again, to refuse the borders between self and surroundings, between the personal and the political. To use materials with meaning: paper because it comes from soil and sand, gold because it holds beauty, light because it reveals what darkness cannot.

Zanele Muholi invites you to explore what environment means when we stop seeing it as something outside of ourselves. What is home when it is not a building, but a necessity, something constitutional, something elemental? When it is the people surrounding you? What does it mean to recognize that your existence is made possible by others, by land, by history, by struggle, by love?

Photographers, writers, poets, and essayists from all over the world, encouraging collaborative submissions. We are looking for work with both bones and flesh — form and content, skill and lived experience. Work that speaks to the heart with depth.