Annie Fletcher speaks to Lidwien van de Ven about her working method, her relation to media images of conflicts and politics, and her mapping of the field of the visible.

Annie Fletcher: I first encountered your work at documenta 12 (2007) and subsequently worked with you on the exhibition 'Be(com)ing Dutch' (2008) at the Van Abbemuseum, where I learned more about your earlier material. I have a sense that you are as interested in a conversation about the photographic image as in making the image itself. You also seem to be interested in the dynamic between how contemporary media or journalistic outlets work with images and how you as an artist might work within an artistic setting. Could you comment on this?

Lidwien van de Ven: I am very interested in how the media works, and a lot of my own working methods overlap with theirs. This may be in terms of subject matter, the location I photograph or in research, which I do quite intensely parallel to the photographing and which makes up a substantial part of my work. The research may be following up a specific case (for instance, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the case around 'Freedom of Expression'1), but also in more reflective thinking or in reading analyses concerning politics and religion. I relate to my photographs not just as images with a purely artistic aim, but my whole working method aims at connecting the aesthetic with the ethical.

There are several thematic lines that direct my research: most significantly, contemporary politics and religion, and where the two intersect. I have followed the development of migrant societies and the emergence of new nationalisms