the veil // landscapes of the northern parts of The Netherlands

In the northern Dutch landscape, earth and water are almost equally balanced and the canals crisscross the land, just like the veins under our skin. I’ve always been fascinated by this omnipresence of water. In 2016 I took my 8x10 inch field camera and started photographing this in the months of winter. The weather is hazy in my photos. The mist works as a veil, as a boundary. It delimits the landscape: you can see up to this strip of land and no further. And yet the light behind the veil, behind the curtain, can be sensed. The land on my photos is bare, there is no greenery on the trees; we’re in the depths of winter. This marshy area represents the transition from a solid to a liquid form, two types of matter: water and earth. It’s an in-between state. My vantage point for the camera is often high up: the crash barriers of the motorway. Here, the camera seems to be floating in the air above the land. Despite the inflexible character of large-format photography, the choice of the high vantage point mimics a slight movement. The viewer senses that the camera isn’t mounted on the ground, but is separate from the earth. The straight horizon of Noord-Holland provides no distraction at all from the landscape itself. As a viewer, you are forced to be here, your eyes directed at a great expanse of grey sky. Not the landscape, but the boundary itself has become the subject.