PHOTO: Jimmy Nelson-Between the Sea and the Sky
Jimmy Nelson has gone all over the earth to photograph native peoples at their proudest moments and to show their soul. While Nelson’s images are undeniably beautiful, some critics have accused him of perpetuating stereotypes and “othering” his subjects. But he disagrees. “I think a lot of judgement is based on fear,” he says. “And that’s the antithesis of my project — it’s about trying to break down those barriers and bring the people closer to you.”
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Fotomuseum aan het Vrijthof Archive
Jimmy Nelson’s exhibition “Between the Sea and the Sky” debuts analogue large-format portraits as part of a collection of 65 photographs and two videos, capturing twenty different Dutch communities in traditional folk costumes. Set against the picturesque backdrops of fishing villages, polder landscapes, and fortified towns, each image is bathed in the Dutch light. With his colorful work, Nelson celebrates the beauty, cultural richness, and authenticity of humanity. With this series, Jimmy Nelson pays a personal, visual homage to Dutch cultural heritage and age-old traditions. The passionate artist and storyteller combines the timeless elegance of Dutch naturalism with the fine art of contemporary portrait photography. For the individual and group portraits, he uses an analogue large-format camera. This results in painterly, romantic images full of exquisite details, reminiscent of the famous Dutch masters. The intrinsic beauty of human diversity and shared heritage reinforces a profound sense of global connectedness – a recurring theme in Nelson’s work. Visitors are invited to engage in an immersive visual dialogue, reflecting on the importance of cultural preservation and unity. The monumental Fotomuseum, with its unique blend of historic and modern architecture, provides the perfect setting for this exhibition. The museum will host a side program with artist talks and school activities. The fact Holland was once so disjointed, cleaved through the middle by the treacherous Southern Sea and edged with a coastline crumbling into islands, accounts in part for the distinctions between these often-remote communities that were only united when the water between them was later reclaimed as land. Today, more than 10% of Dutch households still speak a regional dialects. Celebrating this diversity Nelson explores the history, traditional costume and landscapes of 20 regions of the Netherlands through storytelling, hand-drawn maps and more than 300 photographs. The national identity of the Netherlands, where a fifth of the country was wrung from the sea, is as shaped by its waters as by the land itself. The series title pays tribute to the generations of Dutch people living a precarious life at the mercy of water and weather in a dazzling but difficult landscape. Marken, a former island just 20km north-east of Amsterdam that’s been connected to the mainland since 1957 by a wisp of causeway, was the first place to open its doors to Nelson. He had already photographed this picturesque settlement of half-timbered houses and white lift bridges back in 2014 and, after a series of visits to re-establish relations, a second session was scheduled. The peninsula has more than 30 different traditional costumes – all handmade – including five stages of mourning dress, from darkest black through to purple. When the Afsluitdijk dam was completed in 1937, creating a lake where once there was sea, the floods finally abated but the fishing industry collapsed. The villagers adapted, turning to farming or finding jobs on the mainland. Two hundred kilometres south-west of Marken, a lighthouse built into a 15th-Century church tower keeps watch over the small city of Westkapelle on the former island of Walcheren. Located in the province of Zeeland, a cluster of former islands each with its own dialect, this important trading post has fought off Viking raiders and Spanish reformers, survived the bombing of its dykes in 1944, and withstood the floods of 1953 that claimed almost 2,000 lives and are known here simply as De Ramp (The Disaster). Against this background of sand and sea, several of Nelson’s Zeeland photographs place knollen centre stage. These giant farm horses were central to the livelihood of a province where today three-quarters of the land is still devoted to food production. Achieving these dramatic beach scenes required patience. “We spent an enormous amount of time sitting, talking, waiting… and split seconds where we would run outside when the sun would peek through the storm clouds,” recalled Nelson. “Because the majority of the Netherlands is coastal, the light is continually changing and is volatile in its unpredictability. But in that, unpredictability, there’s often magic moments.” The Dutch light was also at play during Nelson’s winter trip to chilly Friesland in the north, casting a golden hue over its vast flatlands and frozen lakes. For this province of ice-skating fanatics, the colder the better. As the ice thickens, excitement mounts at the prospect of the legendary Elfstedentocht, a 200km ice skating race through 11 Frisian towns.
Photo: Jimmy Nelson, from the series “Between the Sea and the Sky”, © Jimmy Nelson, Courtesy the artist and Fotomuseum aan het Vrijthof
Info: Fotomuseum aan het Vrijthof, Vrijthof 18, Maastricht, The Netherlands, Duration: 9/2-21/9/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00, https://fotomuseumaanhetvrijthof.nl/
