Straight is the Dutch landscape. Flat is the Dutch landscape. The simplicity of an abstract painting like Mondrian's is everywhere in the Dutch polder landscape. But that does not mean there is no layering. The green stripe is the dike along the North Holland Canal. Low is the water under the high sky. The canal a straight line with the water on this side and the polder, the Schermer, metres lower on the other side of the dike. On that other side, too, just the straight lines of the polder roads and the rectangular planes of fields and meadows. In between the traditional farms. The Noord-Holland farmhouses. The roof of one of those farms rises above the dike here like a Dutch pyramid. It gives a symbolic sign to the sky. Whether the inhabitants of these lowlands are subject to the mercy of heaven after all. And the tree that must temper the strong wind that often blows here for the ships on the canal additionally points like a finger upwards.
My great loves are the water and everything about it. Ships, travel, history and photography. The combination is therefore very common in my photographic work. Most photographs are created intuitively. It is an image that strikes me, usually a combination of form and color in which a.. Read more…