The Dutch are known for battling water. In primary school and later in high school,
we were taught about water management, I always found this interesting but also worrying.
I am fascinated with the fact that we managed to raise our country from the sea.
This fact does not come without dangers and things have gone wrong regularly.
I notice that many young people around me are not aware of the risks we face living below sea level.
Our ways of life, buying new things instead of repairing them, comsuming large amounts of meat and flying frequently, all concern me.
The greatest natural disaster to befall the Netherlands in the 20th century was the 1953 flood.
Which killed 1836 people and tens of thousands of animals lost their lives that terrible night.
This tragic event is the foundation of my project 'after it drowns'.
In my project "After it drowns," I visit the places where the dikes broke on the night of January 31, 1953.
I take a photo of the landscape behind those dikes and collect the seawater that borders those dikes.
After developing and scanning my negative, I immerse it in a bath of salty water for the exact duration that the polder in the photo was submerged
during the flood disaster. This way, the landscapes are flooded again.
With this visualization, I aim to raise awareness about the future that awaits us.
The rising sea level is a fact, floods are nothing new, and we are already experiencing problems due to climate change.
If we are not careful, we will not only disappear under the surging mass in the Netherlands but also in many other places around the world.
we were taught about water management, I always found this interesting but also worrying.
I am fascinated with the fact that we managed to raise our country from the sea.
This fact does not come without dangers and things have gone wrong regularly.
I notice that many young people around me are not aware of the risks we face living below sea level.
Our ways of life, buying new things instead of repairing them, comsuming large amounts of meat and flying frequently, all concern me.
The greatest natural disaster to befall the Netherlands in the 20th century was the 1953 flood.
Which killed 1836 people and tens of thousands of animals lost their lives that terrible night.
This tragic event is the foundation of my project 'after it drowns'.
In my project "After it drowns," I visit the places where the dikes broke on the night of January 31, 1953.
I take a photo of the landscape behind those dikes and collect the seawater that borders those dikes.
After developing and scanning my negative, I immerse it in a bath of salty water for the exact duration that the polder in the photo was submerged
during the flood disaster. This way, the landscapes are flooded again.
With this visualization, I aim to raise awareness about the future that awaits us.
The rising sea level is a fact, floods are nothing new, and we are already experiencing problems due to climate change.
If we are not careful, we will not only disappear under the surging mass in the Netherlands but also in many other places around the world.
