From the heights, the silent wonder of Groningen's coastal landscape unfolds: a wide, breathing panorama where time seems to slow down.
You see the mainland, sleek and ordered, where fields lie in rectangular patterns like patchwork, modest in colour but rich in history.
Then comes the dike - the hero of the landscape - like a green line protecting the land from the tide.
Behind the dike begin the salt marshes, the transitional zones between man and sea.
At first, you see the higher salt marshes: salty, firm and overgrown with bushes of seaweed and sea lavender that turn a soft purple in summer.
Further out, the colours sink into grey-green, the ground lower and wetter, where the footsteps of birds remain and the wind has free rein.
And then come the mudflats: shimmering, smooth, almost liquid.
Here the mudflats live in silence - with just the cawing of a gull or the glimpse of a mudflat in the distance.
If you look closely, you can see rows of wooden posts disappearing into the mud, remnants of old land reclamation works.
As if the landscape whispers about man's struggle with the sea, again and again, generation after generation.
In this picture, you see no borders - only transitions. Everything flows into each other.
A place where earth and water do not face each other, but embrace.
Hello I am Hans . My technical training and work come in handy when it comes to my work as a photographer and filmmaker. The now many decades that I have been involved in photography give me the support and experience needed to know what is really special. Form and.. Read more…