Bart van Damme
documentation environment industry sea level reclamation
infrastructure | impacted landscapes by eric klaver
the photograph is not the terrain Bart van Damme’s Maasvlakte II
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While there is a common thread in the nautical history of the Netherlands with other cultures such as ancient Greece, Rome and Britain, as geopolitical forces with global reach and economic fortunes forged on the seas, there also is a difference in the totality of that experience. Instead of a distant otherness, the sea is closer to home in the lowlands of the Netherlands – its constructed landscape is shaped in opposition to its geofluvial character and the sort of misfortune wrought by the extreme forces I experienced that day in Petten. Twenty-five percent of the Dutch population lives below sea level. The sea looms over the land in turns, as an omnipotent bearer of wealth and doom. It is the bi-polar character of the North Sea that left the greatest impression on me when I consider the Dutch landscape. Bart van Damme has been photographing the landscape and architecture of the Netherlands for well over two decades. A trained painter, his interests gradually moved away from painting with photographs of models textured with slide projections of dots, leaves and flowers; his scope has since increased in size and distance. In 2008, he began to photograph the construction of Maasvlakte II, the outermost projection of the Europoort near Rotterdam. It added 2000 hectares to a massive 105 square kilometre harbour, twice the size of the Borough of Manhattan.
It’s hard to imagine a more potent metaphor than the sea. All seafaring cultures have their own mythologies; in both The Odyssey and The Tempest , the sea plays a key role in the plot and fortunes of its characters. However, as powerful a role as the sea may be, there is a distant otherness to such stories. The action happens ‘out there’ far away from home. My first experience of the North Sea was a November day at Petten, a coastal town in the Netherlands northwest of Amsterdam. My father was born and lived his early life nearby. I was driven there by his cousin’s daughter. The clouds were thick and dark and as we pulled into the car park tucked into the leeward side of the protective dike the wind was blowing sea foam like tumbleweeds over the top. We climbed the stairs and as I reached the final few risers the wind pressures began to increase exponentially. Taking the last stair I could barely stand. The immediate feeling was similar to that of a child in the presence of an angry and raging adult – vulnerable and wary. The water was fearsome. This is a stark contrast to my experience of the same sea about a week later in Scheveningen, a resort town and district of Den Haag further south. The sky was a crystal blue and the sea was as smooth as a mirror.
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