In May 2018 I spent five days in the vast, deserted southwest of the island Rhodes. The beaches are shallow and the land sparsely populated. On a stretch of beach less than two hundred meters long, I discovered dozens of sandals, shoes, and flip flops. Many of them were very tattered and I was unable to spot a complete pair. I, who grew up on the sea, first thought of particular currents, which could have been responsible for the flotsam. But then why only shoes? On the sole of a sandal I saw the imprint "Made in

Syria", which offered up an explanation, albeit a speculative one. A shallow, uninhabited beach would be an ideal spot for the undiscovered beaching of refugee boats, whether coming from Turkey or even Libya. Over three days I photographed these finds. Then I left the island. Other Greek islands such as Kos were exposed as migration hot spots in 2015. The subsequent EU agreements with Turkey and Libya changed the preferred migration routes. Rhodes was a narrow and temporary branch of the migratory flow to Western Europe. The shoes that the refugees presumably lost when they landed on the island are traces of a transition from escape to arrival. Like all my photographs, I also show these found objects in a negative image mode that seems to diagnostically objectify these overlooked pieces. 

Zurich, July 2019

Hennric Jokeit (1963) began his photographic exploration of images and their meanings after a person close to him was diagnosed, solely on the basis of medical diagnostic imaging, with a neurological disease. His first exhibitions and publications followed a few years later in 2007. His works were represented by the galleries Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town, and Bildhalle, Zurich, and have been exhibited in Switzerland, South Africa, Germany, France, and Lithuania. At present his photographs are represented by "Galerie 94"  in Baden, Switzerland. In 2016 he published the photography book "Negative Vision", which included an essay by Philip Ursprung. His book "Goodhope", including text by Sean O'Toole, was published in 2018. “Goodhope” was nominated for the Prix Pictet 2019.

Jokeit studied psychology in East Berlin at Humboldt University. One year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, brain researcher Ernst Pöppel brought him to Munich to study the neurobiological foundations of visual perception. Jokeit later worked on the brain mapping of cognitive and affective functions using functional imaging techniques (MRI). Since 2001 he has been head of the Institute for Neuropsychological Diagnostics and Imaging at the Swiss Epilepsy Centre and Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Zurich.