Angeniet Berkers (1985, Rotterdam) is a Dutch documentary photographer who has a bachelor’s degree in Social Work and studied photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK). Before fully turning to photography, she worked as a sociotherapist within mental health care, working with veterans and refugees, among others, dealing with complex PTSD caused by war and violence. This experience continues to influence the themes she engages with and the way she approaches her subjects.
Her long-term projects explore the intersections of history, trauma, and family, examining how personal and collective memories shape the present. Working through extensive research, she combines photography with archival material, text and sound. Her approach is grounded in close, careful collaboration with the people she portrays, with a strong focus on trust and ethical representation.
The photobook about Lebensborn was shortlisted for the Aperture Paris Photo First Book Award and the Historical Book Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles. The project has been exhibited at Kunsthal Rotterdam, PhEST and Encontros da Imagem. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine, GEO.de, and de Volkskrant. Alongside her autonomous projects, she works on commission and teaches workshops and masterclasses in photography at Art Academies.
In 1935, Nazi Germany launched Lebensborn to create a ‘racial elite’. Birth was controlled and children abducted and ‘Germanized.’ Berkers traces how this ideology shaped lives through portraits, testimonies, objects, and the lingering presence of this precarious past in former Lebensborn homes and their surroundings.
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