The Collective Landscape

The Dutch landscape is under heavy pressure from the various claims on its limited space. It’s very challenging to protect the landscape as a collective value, and prepare it for the future at the same time. Changes usually conjure up serious resistance. And it is easy to look away from responsibility, when consequences of choices are less visible in the short term. From migratory birds to agriculture.

Read the explanation of the pictures here

At the RUG, from various disciplines research is being conducted into landscape, nature, agriculture and ecosystems. Hartmann portrayed the specific research areas of professors Theunis Piersma (migratory bird ecology), Han Olff (ecosystems and nature-inclusive agriculture) and Henk Folmer (environmental economics and agricultural diversity) and the people with whom they collaborate. Hartmann was inspired by the concept of ‘Collective Landscape’ by British landscape architect Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, who saw the landscape as a common art form of humanity. To emphasize this, in a number of cases Hartmann himself placed additional lighting at locations where the scientists were conducting field research.

Photo's from the series were shown in Volkskrant Magazine, Quest and Aesthetica. The series was selected for the shortlist of the Sony World Photography Awards and the finals of the LensCulture Exposure Award.

From 28 September 2019 through 5 January 2020, his series ‘The Collective Landscape’ was exhibited in the Natuurmuseum Fryslân in Leeuwarden (NL).

Eddo Hartmann (The Netherlands, 1973) studied at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague. Earlier projects were among others the photo books ‘Hier Woont Mijn Huis’, a personal series about the house of his parents, and ‘Setting the Stage - North Korea’, on the life of North Koreans in capital of Pyongyang.