Son[i]a #441 

Adam Broomberg (b. Johannesburg, 1970) is an artist and educator, whose practice dissolves the boundaries between photojournalism, cultural critic, and ally for the vulnerable.  Born in apartheid-era Johannesburg to a Jewish family, descended from Holocaust survivors, his trajectory spans teenage anti-apartheid activism, years embedded in global conflict zones, and commercial collaborations that later became subjects of critique. Across this arc, his work has evolved into a sustained inquiry into power: his own positionality, the complicities of photography, and its potential to be repurposed as a tool for change.

Through intimate encounters and disarming honesty, Adam Broomberg revisits the cracks in the ideologies he was raised within, turning them into spaces of solidarity and shared vulnerability. His commitment to art as a vehicle for social justice and to struggles across the world,  especially Palestine, anchors his work in a deeply humanist ethos.

In this conversation, Adam Broomberg traces his own path through images, complicities, and refusals. He reflects on the toxicity of photography, how he engaged with its reproduction and refusal – through projects with large-format cameras, archival excavations, and counter-surveillance. We talk about the olive tree project, about authorship as collective practice, and about his conviction that the personal is always political. Now based in Berlin, carrying the memory of genocide, he offers a lucid reflection on what it means to inhabit Jewishness today — and why, in his view, the greatest threat to the Jewish community no longer comes from the past, but from something more insidious in the present.

With the support

_{Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.}