FIELD NOTES 031
32 pp / 190 x 230mm
Staple Bound
Fedrigoni paper
First edition of 100
FN031
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My work develops from an interest in a specific place or as in the case of this series ‘Brabant’ from an interest in the landscapes surrounding my hometown Tilburg, in the south of The Netherlands. I have an emotional connection with these places because they constitute the landscape of my childhood. I spend a lot of time investigating narrow geographies within these landscapes; I tend to move around in certain areas over and over again with the changing light and through the different seasons. Wandering around, it is fascinating for me to see how we have changed and how we continue to change our surroundings. In this respect it is important to note that my photography is driven essentially by an emotional involvementwith place rather than by an attempt to gain some exact knowledge about changes that have occurred.
The Brabant series has originated from my profound feeling of loss. I mean the loss of familiar places, the loss of the original landscape and the visible history of it and of course the loss of biodiversity and free space. Since my childhood days I have seen Brabant changing continuously and often rapidly. I photograph mainly rural places, because for me, it is in these rural places that the signs and traces of human presence are juxtaposed in a meaningful way relative to the natural world.
Many of these rural places I knew in my childhood have disappeared because of housing and industrial developments, so I am also searching for places in Brabant that bear some kind of reminder of those lost places. Reminders, sometimes almost visible and tangible, sometimes more indeterminate and associative. I choose to photograph contemporary rural places that evoke feelings connected with those lost places of my childhood.
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FIELD NOTES is a series of affordable zines showcasing photography projects which explore our relationship with 'place'.