Drawing board landscapes
It is often the first thing foreigners see as soon as their airplane starts to descend into the Netherlands: the spectacular lines in the landscape. These landscapes did not arise naturally, but were designed on a drawing board.
The Netherlands is located in a delta area and the land is largely below sea level. A large part of the landscape was reclaimed from the sea in the 17th century. It has been drained by windmills and surrounded by dikes creating one of the most fertile agricultural landscapes in the world. After the second World War, it was decided that agricultural plots needed to be reclassified on a drawing board I order to gain efficiency and feed the growing population. This was called ‘the great land consolidation’ (Dutch; ‘Ruilverkaveling’). An intense collaboration between spatial planners, farmers, water engineers and the Dutch government has made it possible that the Netherlands has become the world's second largest food exporter.
Recent insights into the environmental consequences of agriculture have made the future of conventional intensified agriculture uncertain. Politicians debate whether a tiny and densely populated country like The Netherlands needs to feed the world? New rules force nature-inclusive choices and extensive land use. Will this be the end of the intensely cultivated drawing board landscapes?
Documentary Photographer Loek Buter (1982) grew up on a farm in the Dutch countryside. Using a drone he photographed the landscape he grew up in; fields with tulips, cabbage, grass, sheep, cows, ditches, and canals. The same landscapes fellow countryman and Dutch painter Piet Mondriaan was inspired with. From the air you van see the spectacular lines of the drawing board return.
Around the lighthouse
It is hard work, but turns out to be possible: a completely self-sufficient life. From growing your own food to generating your own energy.
It seems like an idyllic picture, in and around the lighthouse of Workum in Friesland, one of the most northern provinces of the Netherlands. Cornelie Ploeg (69) lives there, completely self-sufficient. Cornelie has been living as sustainably as possible for over 25 years, at one with nature. Until a year ago, she shared this lifestyle with her husband, Reid de Jong, who passed away in November 2020 at the age of 86. In 1967 he had already settled in the lighthouse in Workum with his wife Wijnie and their four children. In response to our consumptive lifestyle that exploits the earth, he realized an almost self-sufficient existence there.
They grew their own food, kept chickens, goats, sheep and bees, made their own clothes, fished and generated their own energy with solar panels and a windmill. They got water from a well. What they could not provide themselves was exchanged with friends or bought in an organic store. Reid earned an income from his work as an architect, Cornelie worked as a doctor.
Self-sufficient living can sometimes be a struggle. It's hard work, every day, all year round. Sowing in spring, pulling weeds, harvest and preserve vegetables in summer and fall, sling honey. In winter chopping wood, spinning and knitting. And taking care of the animals every day; goats, sheep and chickens. And there are always maintenance jobs to do. You have to ensure that nature provides enough to live on. At the same time, it is important that you let it run its course, so that a healthy biotope is created.
After Reid's death, Cornelie continues her self-sufficient life with the help of friends and volunteers.
For more information www.devuurtorenrond.nl
A bear in the lowlands
For seven years, the German animal trainer Maxy Niedermeyer and her Bulgarian brown bear Natascha lived on an estate between the Dutch lowlands.
Before she ended up in the Netherlands, Maxy (80) traveled around the world with circuses, her acts with bears, lions and tigers drew full tents. But times change. Her career came to an abrupt end when European legislation forbade performing with wild animals. With her husband, tiger and bear, she left for the Netherlands where the animals could be taken care of at a wild animal foundation called Stichting Leeuw.. But the bond with Natascha was so close that she found it very difficulty to part with her. After consultation with the Dutch government and an animal aid organization, it was decided that it was better not to part the bear from her trainer, she was too weak and the bond was too strong. Natascha was allowed to stay with Maxy and enjoy a well-deserved retirement.
When she was 11, Maxy assisted her mother in an act for the first time, and she never left the circus ring. From the day the bear Natascha was born in Sofia, Maxy bottle fed her. Together they traveled all over the world and stood in front of sold-out circus tents from Germany to Israel and from Tunisia to Azerbaijan.
What was applauded in full circus tents fifty years ago, today most Europeans regard as unacceptable animal suffering. Maxy has a hard time comprehending the changing zeitgeist. She says she has always taken good care of her animals. Her life's work was to train wild animals so that people could experience them live. She showed that wild animals are also loving creatures that should not be kept at a distance. She hoped that a better understanding of animals would lead to people taking better care of them in their natural environment and to a better conservation of wild populations.
Much to Maxy's great sadness, her bear died in May 2021, aged 43, an exceptionally old age. The prospect of a life without her animals weighs heavily on her.
A bear in the lowlands was awarder with the Dutch Zilveren Camera Award 2022 for best national documentary series and the Lens Culture Critics Choice 2022.
Watchers, Sleepers and Dreamers
The threat from the sea sometimes seems to have disappeared from the Dutch landscape. But the watcher, sleeper and dreamer dikes still form the backbone of a life below sea level.
This project tells the stories of the landscape and the residents of the unique Dutch dyke landscape. A landscape full of history that is formed by the old inland dikes (the sleepers and dreamers) and the dikes on the sea side (the watchers). Transformed many times throughout the centuries, from sea to swamp, from lake to polder. Almost every square meter of land comes from the drawing board and the human hand can be seen everywhere. But how long can the Dutch continu to live like this with rising sea levels as a result of climate change? How long will it be possible to maintain this unique way of life?
This is an ongoing project starting in 2005 and forms a document of a life below sea level in the Netherlands. A social landscape story about the poetry of everyday life below sea level in a landscape full of watchers, sleepers and dreamers.
Vogelkinderen
From the moment fifteen-year-old Rik taught the parakeet in his boy's room to fly from cage to bed, he decided he wanted to be a falconer. After school he works together with others as a volunteer at a falconer. Rik does not have a smartphone or email address, but he does have his own red-tailed hawk. Vogelkinderen freely translates as ‘bird children’.
Sons of the meadowlands