In collaboration with the Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, the Rijksmuseum is organising its eleventh photography exhibition centred on the annual ‘Document Nederland’ photography project. The title of this year’s exhibition is ‘Rising waters’. The exhibition will be on view from 29 November 2008 to 1 March 2009.
The exhibition focuses on the new relationship the Dutch are developing with the water they encounter throughout their country. Warnings about the problems climate change will bring have been circulating for years: rising sea levels, flooding rivers, subsidence and too much rainwater. To combat this, dikes are being raised, weir islands deepened, rivers widened and land returned to the water. For this exhibition, Marnix Goossens has photographed the Dutch landscape as it is made ready for the … rising waters.
Goossens travelled throughout the Netherlands taking photographs of dozens of places where the effect of rising water is already visible or where it will exert its influence in time. He chose such topics as a lowered weir island in the Rhine at Driel, which allows the water to flow through better and ‘snuffelterpen’, pilot trials of mounds made of dredged material in the Klompenwaard nature reserve. Some areas have been designated for future flooding; ‘returning’ them to the sea or river. The residents have been told that - sometime in the future - they will have to leave the area. And in the meantime, additional attention is being paid to the ten ‘weak links’ in the dunes along the coast, including the Hondsbosse and Pettemer seawalls near Petten in the province of Noord-Holland. In some places, such as those near De Kerf between Bergen and Schoorl, the dunes are being removed to allow the water to flow in (within limits). Elsewhere, for instance at Noordwijk (another area considered to be a weak link), trailing suction hopper dredgers are replenishing the foreshore.
It is hard to find a province or city these days that is not running a water-related project. And last September, the ‘Delta Committee’ led by Cees Veerman presented the Dutch government with its recommendations for guaranteeing that the people of the Netherlands will still be able to live here safely even in two hundred years’ time.
The threat is not yet visible in the landscape. At first sight, nothing seems to be going on and farmland and rivers look peaceful. But if we take a closer look, we can see that the consequences of the ‘national strategy’ implemented by the Dutch government, provinces and municipalities, which Her Majesty Queen Beatrix announced in the 2008 Speech from the Throne, are already visible. A national strategy with only one aim: to (literally) stay dry, now and in the future.
Marnix Goossens (1967) attended the Utrecht School of the Arts and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. He has been exhibiting his work at both nationally and internationally since 1996 and his work is part of such collections as those of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Fries Museum and the ABN Amro bank. In 2001 Goossens won the Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst (Fund for the Arts) incentive prize for Photography. -- www.rijksmuseum.nl
Comment and add to the story without registration, but keep the comments meaningful please. Links are not accepted.
