Various Dutch Landscapes

Riverlandscape at Wijk bij Duurstede is a digital montage on the Lek river. It is a contemporary interpretation of the famous Jacob van Ruisdael painting Molen bij Wijk bij Duurstede from circa 1670.

Just as Jacob van Ruisdael focused on the mill in his own time, as a modern and monuemntal element within the landscape. So too did I focus on contemporary structures in the landscape. Besides the mill, eventhough a newer rebuild version of the time of Van Ruisdael, I looked at the civil-engeneering structure of the crossing of the Lek River with the Amsterdam-Rhine-Channel, with its impressive Princess Irene-Sluices.
Besided the obvious place and content similarities with the painting of van Ruisdael. It is as much inspired by other paintings who have used multiple perspectives to arrange a sense of movement through the landscape.

This photograph is shown at Werk aan het Spoel in Culemborg 2022, for LekArt festival.

Images out of the Haarlemmermeerpolder

The Geniedijk – A world unto itself

The Geniedijk traverses the Haarlemmermeer polder, breaks the polder in two, into North and South. Van Vliet continues: “Although there is a bicycle path along the entire Geniedijk, you only really start to see something when you walk across this dike. Around you is building, being built, but in front and behind you you see the dike, the world you are in. Just as your mind is interrupted with thoughts coming and going, so is walking on the Geniedijk, occasionally interrupted by roads that cross this dike.

Around you, you contemplate the world, you are not directly a part of it, but see the buildings; the houses, the industry, the agriculture, the polder.

Sheep and cows graze the dike, geese make their nests there. This makes this elevation in the landscape look like a natural element, a natural elevation, although you know it was formed by man.
22 coupures
In the 10.5 km length of the dike, it is interrupted no less than 22 times, a coupure in the dike, by roads and bicycle paths. In this portrait of the Geniedijk, I photographed the dike itself every 200 meters, east to west and west to east. In addition, I photographed the view from the dike every 500 meters, toward the north and south. This creates a world unto itself on the dike, and the view directed outward from the dike.”

The Geniedijk – a world unto itself is a poetic title for a pragmatic approach: one picture every 200 meters means around 50 pictures per single side. That’s 100 images, a metaphor for 100 steps.

Polderlinten

The polderlinten are the straight streets the cross the Haarlemmermeerpolder from south to north. There are four of these original roads crossing the polder.
I took a photograph from the view every 500 meters, in order to get a sense of the landscape that is making up this polder.