Ornates

​​

Collaboration with Bob Kraaijeveld van Hemert

​

The pruned, shaped and deformed landscape reflects the human desire to master and control its natural environment. It is a reflection in which factuality seems to be paramount. Symmetry, perfect curves, or, conversely, straight lines and clear demarcations create the impression that man has overpowered nature.

 

However, this impression is only a persistent illusion. The living is anything but controllable. The living grows, shrinks, changes, decays and is infinitely vulnerable. All the layers we keep adding to all living things seem to deny this firmly, but we can't fight it, or at most temporarily.

 

Our series is a photographic perception of our hopeless attempts to manipulate our natural environment. The manipulated characters in our images reflect the naivety of the idea of ​​control. We place human bodies in natural contexts to visualize our subordination to uncompromising nature. Even if we succeed in reshaping the living, we find time and again that the living cannot be controlled, at least not in the way we had hoped.
 

We humans are not superior. We do not have endless power over our environment. No matter how hard we try to own or exploit nature, it’s a quirky force that encompasses and transcends us. We are at the mercy of her.

 

With our series we want to encourage a new relationship with our natural environment. In our photographic images we manifest people stripped of their inviolability, characterized by their temporary character, as dependents and not masters.