Potential Landscapes | Living Landscapes | Reconciling Landscapes

These projects are related, the last part Reconciling Landscapes is in progress. Each subproject consists of photo negatives which have been manipulated with ink (and blood or coffee for instance). My photo work reflects on people's ability to preserve nature, trees and marine life from a personal consciousness, affecting how we perceive and design our collective space. I'm teasing boundaries between fantasy and reality. Each project focuses on Landscapes from another angle, as an episode of 1 photographic journey. Potential Landscapes: I've lived on the artificial city island Amsterdam IJburg for 2 years, where my studio overlooked the IJmeer lake and the expansion of the city, with a new island under construction. The green zone of the lake and its ecological connection with the nearby coastal region would decrease with the rise of new bricks, apartment blocks, football fields and road/tram infrastructures. At the same time I've experienced nature as a strong force, being able to revive or evolve miraculously and endlessly (if people give space to organic structures). That's where I've started to draw volcanoes or an ocean, in the city. To show a bigger potential beneath the surface, that could inspire people to design and build in eco-friendly ways, such as floating houses, public rooftopgardens or Earthship-shops. Living Landscapes has been the project I've worked on during an art residency in Droiteval, France. To connect with untamed nature, fresh waterfalls and ecozones more freely, leading to new techniques inspired by pointillism and divisionism. I also started to photograph my daughter and partner as a part of the project, yet I didn't (dare to) manipulate those photonegatives with ink. Reconciling Landscapes brings people and nature close together as if they melt as one or as if they strongly relate to one another. I'm trying to capture people's natural behavior once they surrender in a field, lake or tree. I'm playing with ink more vulnerably, to search for the interconnection between cosmic energies and peoples (sub)consciousness, impacting one another. As I am pregnant during the creation of this series, I am aware of a tangible relation between an invisible seed and its outer growth. I wish to inspire people to care for biodiversity and social diversity as 1 whole system. Beyond old conditioning or control. Restoring nature can take place once people trust the Unknown. As I am training myself to walk the path (in pictures), I got to know my fears and powers more. As I work with medium format negatives, photos can be blown up to a large extent and will be suitable for use in a gallery or public space. The biodiversity around Amsterdam's new city island has been represented like a surreal parallel world, with an ocean and rivers, whereby energies break through tightly constructed canals like magma or flow through trees like water. Processes or elements such as oxygen are moving constantly. I've started to dance along, to rise