Eva Roefs

For this project, Roefs returns to her birthplace 20 years later and connects her own memories with observations of contemporary Brabant. The outcome is a visual story that uses documentary and staged photography, hovering between reality and the imagination. She turns her gaze once again to where it all started, the landscape of Brabant and its inhabitants, with particular attention to the young people growing up there now. 

In the public image of Brabant’s farmland, clichés such as farmers’ protests, carnival and folklore dominate. Young people often remain in the background, while it is precisely this group who experience uprooting while searching for connection, where generational shifts and new identities become visible. Roefs views the Brabant countryside as an in-between space: it is neither purely urban nor truly rural — it is an ambiguous area between tradition and modernity, between disappearing and remaining. 

Using her father’s Mamiya RZ camera, Roefs developed her images in his darkroom at her family home. The use of this analogue technique contributes to the timelessness of the region that Roefs wants to convey to the public.