The Europeans: Our Ancestral Home (2022)

Publisher: The Europeans
Design: Kummer & Herrman
Softcover: 112 pages
Dimensions: 170 x 213 mm (6.7 x 8.4 in.)
Language: English / French
Print run: 1,000 copies

Shipping July 2022

Our Ancestral Home is the story of a stunningly beautiful region of Europe where locals cherish their traditions, speak a mysterious language and pass down picturesque houses and farms from generation to generation.

That is how it has always been. But tourists and wealthy urbanites have now discovered the region, and the original inhabitants are succumbing to the lure of the exorbitant amounts that outsiders are willing to pay for a rural retreat.

“We have sold our country,” activists lament. But who can resist the laws of capitalism?

“I’d rather have a free country, and spend 40 years in prison, than continue as we are.”
— Hodei

The Europeans is a ten-year quest to find the contemporary European at a time when Europe is struggling. Growing nationalism and populism are reviving old ghosts. Authoritarian regimes are on the rise, and the political dream of a united and peaceful Europe is proving increasingly fragile.

In the decade leading up to 2030, Van Bruggen and Hornstra will document 20 regions across Europe. Each period spent in one of these regions culminates in an exhibition and the launch of a publication with the same title in the place where the work was created.

This publication is the result of a period spent in a region entitled Our Ancestral Home, somewhere in Europe.

Each region publication is accompanied by a numbered hardcover edition including a signed print, limited to an edition of 120 copies. More information here.