The coming of age of a photography project

Showing you the evolution in my long-term project

For the past 2.5 years I've been working on a photography project with the working title 'Riverlands'. I live in the Betuwe, a region in the middle of the Netherlands between the big rivers. It is a very fertile area and therefore called the fruit garden of the Netherlands. I love the rivers and walking along their banks. So it's no surprise that I'm attracted to water.

The Netherlands has always struggled with water and nearly half of the country is below sea level. Almost a quarter of our land was once just water. As we also have a very dense population, you can imagine that every square metre of our country has been thought about and designed. However, as well as the beauty of the country, I also see many things that I do not like.

I wanted to document our relationship with water. Not really knowing what I wanted to say with this project. I had just started and I thought things would become clear once I had a bunch of photos. Then I would see some red lines in the storytelling.

But …