Peter Van Dongen

NOSTOS ALGOS

16 may - 15 june, 2026

Nostos Algos reveals the intimate world captured by Peter Van Dongen’s analog camera during the 1970's and 1980's, a time before the rush of digital immediacy. Each frame holds a quiet, almost sacred pause, a tender trace of moments that time has since softened but never erased. Van Dongen’s photographs are more than images; they are echoes of a past lived fully, now seen through the warm, textured grain of film and colored by the gentle ache of memory. At Zema Contemporary, Nostos Algos unfolds as a meditation on nostalgia itself, the longing for what was and the bittersweet pain of return. This exhibition invites us to step back into those vanished decades, to feel the pulse of everyday life caught in fading light and shadow, and to confront the emotions that surface when the past calls us home. Peter Van Dongen’s analog legacy reminds us that memory, like film, is fragile but endlessly rich.