What does life look like in the XXI Dutch VINEX district? In the postwar urban developments the city of Purmerend, served is a model for many Dutch municipalities. Five photographers were commissioned by the Museum Waterland to create works that explores the actual and personal image of this urban growth phenomenon.

In 1950s Purmerend had the population of only 7000. From the moment it was officially declared a growing city in the 1960s until today its population grew tenfold. In that time the character of the city changed drastically: from a sleepy town for Amsterdam commuters it turned into a multi-cultural municipality, which is still struggling to define its identity.

There are more cities like this in the Netherlands. By now more than half of the Dutch population is living in such agglomerations with no clear identity. There has been no detailed description or visual documentation of these places. Boring and common, they exist outside public attention.

Museum Waterland and IMCO (Institute for Social and Cultural Support) approached Bas Vroege (Paradox) to commission artists and photographers and create the missing image of these places. This is how P’REND was born. The project resulted in an exhibition of photo and video work, a website and a publication.

Authors

Luuk Kramer (b. 1958) is a professional architecture photographer. He works primarily for architecture firms such as Claus en Kaan, Quist Wintermans, and Cepezed, but also for contractors and developers. His photographs have been published in the Dutch Architecture Yearbook, as well as in a variety of newspapers and specialist journals. Luuk Kramer has also contributed to a variety of books.

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Saskia Janssen (b. 1968) lives and works in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Art in The Hague and was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 1996 and 1997. Janssen is represented by Ellen de Bruijne PROJECTS and currently teaches at de Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. From January through December 2015 she is a resident artist at I.S.C.P., New York.

Saskia Janssen mixes a variety of media with an anthropological approach in her socially engaged site-specific works. She has collaborated with a.o. sailors, nightclub singers, hard drug users, Buddhists, psychiatric hospital patients and inmates. Often to make visible, or materialize situations that are invisible at first. The outcomes of these collaborations have taken the form of installations, recorded albums, drawings, performances and printed publications. Together with George Korsmit, in 2005 she established The Rainbow Soulclub, an art studio in an Amsterdam shelter for long-term drug users. Since then, they have run a weekly program in the studio, often together with their art students.


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George Korsmit (b. 1953) is a Dutch visual artist. He was born in Oudenbosch, and now works in Amsterdam.

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Korrie Besems (b. 1961) is an artist working with photography and text. She currently lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Besems is also tutor ‘Facts & Fiction’ at BEAR, ArtEZ, University of the Arts, Arnhem, a member of the Institute Counsel of ArtEZ, University of the Arts and a senior advisor Art in Public Space, Nijmegen.

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Platforms

© Saskia Janssen & George Korsmit
© Saskia Janssen & George Korsmit
© Saskia Janssen & George Korsmit
© Luuk Kramer
© Luuk Kramer
© Luuk Kramer
© Luuk Kramer
© Korrie Besems
© Korrie Besems
© Korrie Besems
© Korrie Besems
© Korrie Besems
© Siebe Swart
© Siebe Swart
© Siebe Swart
Janssen & Korsmit, installation view
Janssen & Korsmit, installation view
Luuk Kramer, Panorama Baanstee and De Koog
Luuk Kramer, Panorama Baanstee and De Koog
Korrie Besems, P'REND Remembers, installation view
Korrie Besems, P'REND Remembers, installation view
Luuk Kramer, Panorama Baanstee and De Koog
Luuk Kramer, Panorama Baanstee and De Koog
Janssen & Korsmit, installation view
Janssen & Korsmit, installation view

Exhibition

Museum Waterland and IMCO(Institute for Social and Cultural Support) approached Bas Vroege (Paradox) to commision artists and photographers and create the missing image of these places. This is how P’REND was born. The project resulted in an exhibition of photo and video work, a website and a publication.

  • 03.12.200128.01.2002Museum Waterland, Purmerend

Book

The book brings together the four bodies of work of Besems, Janssen & Korsmit, Kramer and Swart.

Korrie Bessems photographed 54 neutral photographic cityscapes of Purmerend. These were published weekly in a local newspaper (Noordhollands Weekblad). Readers were invited to respond to the images. Reactions were sent by email, through the website or even by telephone.

Saskia Janssen and George Korsmit presented a digital photo and video installation of a class portrait of Regional College Waterland. We see a diverse group of 16-20 year-olds photographed against the backdrop of the edge of a football field in the area Purmer-Noord. The work is a result of collaboration between the makers and the group. It can be understood as a performance, sculpture, a staged document; “an ode to the future” as they themselves prefer to put it.

Luuk Kramer was fascinated by the development of the industrial terrain of Purmerend. He documented brick constructions at the rundown industrial sites from the seventies. He combined these images with those of the ribbon development, so characteristic of today’s business areas once can find cutting through polders across the country. Kramer presented his work as installation that highlighted the interchangeability of the architectural concepts.

Siebe Swart, Amsterdam based photogrpaher, has a personal connection with P’REND: he grew up in Purmerend and it is where his mother still lives. For this work Swart returned to the meaningful places from his youth. His photographs evoke a paradoxical mixture of feelings: a strange combination of tension and security . He combines his own images, created with a large format camera, with postcards from the seventies taken from the Purmerend Museum – a kind of ‘official’ image of the place.

  • P’REND – image of the growing city
    Luuk Kramer, Siebe Swart, Saskia Janssen & George Korsmit, Korrie Besems, Paradox, Voetnoot publishers, 2000.
    Design: Henrik Barends
    Pages: 80
    Cover: Soft cover with flaps
    Size: 150 x 215 mm
    Language: Dutch and English summaries
    ISBN: 90-802655-5-1

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