JAN KEMPENAERS MEMORIALS

Jan Kempenaers (BE, 1968), has photographed urban and natural landscapes since the mid-1980s. Between 2016 and 2025, he documented these brutalist war monuments of socialist Yugoslavia. Initially capturing large Spomeniksover twenty years ago, his early work highlighted their futuristic forms amidst historical ambiguity. Recently, Kempenaers returned to photograph countless smaller, local memorials across Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.