Prompted by his love for photobooks and visual storytelling, Walter Costa (1987) enrolled in the master’s programme Photography & Society at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Costa is interested in the reasons behind making and distributing photographs in a non-artistic context. Instead of creating new images, he uses and analyses existing photographs to tell stories that disclose hidden facts.
For the project Autolykos Collection (2019-2023) he researched the role photography plays in the looting of, and online trade in archaeological artefacts from the Middle East and North Africa. As these objects are eagerly purchased by Western collectors, thus resulting in local cultural heritage disappearing in the West, Costa refers to this mechanism as digital colonialism. In collaboration with a Syrian archaeologist, he collected images of artefacts offered for sale on private Facebook groups, and pages for sharing archaeological sites to encourage illegal excavations. Through 3D reconstructions he furthermore created images of looted objects that have most likely disappeared from the public eye for good. Armed with a hidden camera, he also posed as a buyer in search of fraudulent traders.
The photographs depicting hands reveal the main motive for the trade in these stolen artefacts. They are symbolic of the greed of the Westerners who long for a literally tangible relationship with the past. In this way, Costa’s work Autolykos Collection (named after the mythological figure who excelled in theft) questions these illegal practices, which are condoned by the social media.
Text: Esther Darley
Translation from Dutch to English: Marie Louise Schoondergang