S&S W9 Maps

Last Wednesday evening I went to a “picture this evening” This is an initiative for photographers to get to see on another to fill in the gap that was left after closing most of the film develop companies were we used to meet waiting for the prints or films over coffee. During these meetings two or three photographers are asked to tell about their work most of the time is this related to exhibitions since the meetings are in a museum.

This time it was about Caribbean ties. https://www.museon.nl/nl/tentoonstelling/caribbean-ties

Background information

We most of the time say that Columbus discovered these area’s and the Vikings before them but how can this be “discovered” since people lived there century’s before that already.

The problem is that the Western invasion was so strong that we don’t know for sure how these area’s were before. The Leiden University, archeology department wanted to show what was found. They came up with the idea to have 10 exhibitions through the Caribbean’s and one in the Netherlands. For the one in the Netherlands 6 young photographers all originated from the Caribbean’s were asked to pitch and 2 of them were chosen to work for the exposition. Jeroen Toirkens* coached the two photographers Kevin Osepa en Tarona Leonora https://tarona.nl/ and https://www.kevinosepa.com/

The way it works with "picture this" is that the photographers are being interviewed. They tell a bit about their history and other projects and than they zoom in on the project. I was there before but didn't like it this time too much. The interview was long and with a lot of repetition. Kevin had some interesting ideas but his photos were half of the time not as good as the story itself. Tarona had less to tell.

After 2.5 hours we could go and see the exhibition. That disappointed me a lot. There were about 9 photos in a corner of Rarona and from Kevin we saw a double screen with movies and 3 even smaller screens that also had movies.

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Yet the evening was not for nothing. Because in an room close by I saw maps of Dutch landscapes. I made pictures of it.

What was so special in of this images? The maps were all about different landscapes and types of soil. Where I always think of water, a difference appears to be made in river landscape, sea landscape and lake landscape. A lot of history was placed with it and that can lead to new places to do research on.

old dunes and beachwalls; will be gone

melted water surfaces from the icetime; will be the border of what stays

River terasses

hills arose from land ice in the pleistocene; will stay

slightly higher sandy areas poor in resources; were there at the end of the pleictocene.

Tidal flats and salt marshes that constantly move under the influence of tides. Lie outside the dikes

The young dunes. Below that are drinking water basins. They were only formed after 1000 AD.

From the 11th century we started to reclaim these areas to win new land.

river plains with floodplain that may flood in the spring because then the rivers contain more water due to the melting of snow and ice. Deep holes have been created in many places through the extraction of clay, sand and gravel

Peat landscape where peat was extracted. Much of it has been excavated

boulder clay plateau where large stones were left ("Hunnebedden" were build with them)

a map were the areas form above are mostly represented.

the purple part is everything under sea level

Conclusion:

Looking at the map of the Netherlands during pleistocene up to 10.000 years ago that is almost exactly the map that was drawn being the predicition of what will be left of the Netherlands in 300 years. Seeing the map of everything under sea level (and the parts at the left of it) in combination with the map with the combined landscapes you have the prediction.

By looking at these maps I see areas that are interesting to visit. I can look for typical features of the different landscapes. I will continue to focus on the areas that are predicted to disappear.

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* Jeroen I know for several years and I admire his photography. His project Nomadslife is special. Since 1999 he documents the life of the last nomads. He went there 12 times. http://jeroentoirkens.com/pages/NomadsLife

this map shows roman settlements. The dotted gray line is the cost line at this moment. We all know that the romans were in the east of the country but the west part became more intersting becaus of a new law.