In response to nostalgic sentiments such as “the good old days” and that Dutch culture is under threat – which right-wing populist parties like to exploit – I created the collage series The Beauty of Our Country. The title of this series is taken from a series of books from the 1950s and 1960s for which Cas Oorthuys took the photographs. I have interwoven two parts of this series: Architecture of this Century (which shows progress and hope with new ideas in architecture, featuring designs by Oud and Rietveld and post-war architecture) and Traditional Costumes (which highlights the disappearing regional traditions of uniform community clothing from small villages).

When creating this collage series, I paid attention to the correct perspective and shadows, so that the collages can also be seen as new photographs. Photographs of a white Netherlands, which once again conforms to the village community morality of control and “that's how we do things here”.

Do we really want to go back to that?

photos & films