Cowards

Are cows cowards? Looking at this photo one can at least say some are more cowardly than others. Or some are more courageous than others, if you prefer.

Let me say something in favor of them. When I arrived, they were grazing at quite a distance from me. As they saw me, they hesitated a moment, but quickly decided I was not the kind of predator that eats live cows, and, driven by curiosity, started running towards the gate where I was standing. When they were close enough to satisfy their curiosity, they stopped.

Has curiosity ever killed a cow? Possibly, but they are not the kind of animals that prefer a life full of endeavors and dangers, as cats do. They are on earth for a simple task: to eat and to digest, to produce as much milk and/or meat as they can. They are here to serve. A little break to satisfy their curiosity once a day they hardly allow themselves.

The cows behind the two in the front aren't cowards. They are a bit embarrassed, staring at a photographer while they feel they should be at work. That's why they're hiding themselves.
Well, we won't tell anyone, will we? Promise!




(Photographed in the Welzingepolder in Zeeland (NL) on June 20, 2011)


Photo available at Hollandse Hoogte

A dance III

About a month ago, I was on my way from home to a meeting in Amsterdam. I had decided to walk from the station to my meeting, knowing that a demonstration against nuclear energy was held on Dam Square, in the middle of the city, which I wanted to give a quick look.
When I arrived the speakers had already spoken, and now there was music coming from the podium. There was a serene atmosphere, completely unlike the militant rallies against nuclear power that were held in the eighties, the years between Harrisburg and Chernobyl. After Chernobyl, the reservations about nuclear energy became much more common, and the active movement more or less dissolved into the communis opinio. But the climate debate came, and slowly nuclear power became fashionable again. And then a wave overran the Fukushima reactors, and created a momentum for a new movement.

I don't know the cause of the serenity. It may have been the music, or a feeling of homecoming after so many years. My agenda left me no time to investigate.
But in the middle of this serenity was this woman, dancing slowly. Everytime I see this photo I feel jealous of her. Dancing slowly in the middle of a crowd, in the middle of the city - I don't think I could ever do that. But look at her eyes. She seems perfectly happy. I would love to stay there, come home, maybe even dance.
But I had my agenda.



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(More pictures of the demonstration here, at the blog of my friend and colleague Michiel Wijnbergh, who had a different agenda)

A dance II

A few weeks ago I photographed a military exercise in Dokkum, a beautiful town in Fryslân. At the end of the day a company of young marines had to storm a builders' yard occupied by 'insurgents'. There I came across this young dancer.

The yellow stop on the barrel of his Diemaco C7 assault rifle indicates the thing can only shoot blanks now. The expression on this young marine's face indicates he is loving his job. As an 'insurgent' he is allowed to frolic around instead of being a disciplined soldier. 

If it were all for real, this dance would probably not have looked so elegant. Or there would be 5 dead marines by now. And one photographer.

What men want...

Last month at the bi-annual Amsterdam AutoRAI car show:

What do men want? Big trunks...

A dance

The bare facts about this photo:

We are on the tarmac of Eindhoven Airbase in The Netherlands.

We are looking into the hull of a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft, a plane that is capable of performing both strategic and tactical airlift operations. It can transport a payload of 170,900 lb or 77,500 kg over a distance of 2400 nautical miles or 4400 kilometers without refueling.
The C-17 is operated by Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC), a multinational organization consisting of several NATO members plus Sweden and Finland, to provide for heavy airlift capability that should otherwise be out of reach for these smaller countries.

The white trails on the tarmac are made by a 55.3 tons (121,914 lb) heavy, self-propelled armored howitzer, type PzH 2000, that just drove off the ramp out of the C-17. This heavy artillery piece can deliver 10 high explosive 155mm shells per minute as far as 40 kilometers away. It can even perform Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact, which means it can quickly fire five rounds with different amounts of propellant, at a different angle, so that they will all arrive at the same target at the same time. How about that.
The howitzer was brought back from Afghanistan, and was the last piece of heavy equipment coming home after the redeployment (= withdrawal) of the Dutch forces in the Afghan province of Uruzgan.

These are the bare facts about this photo, and thank you, Wikipedia.

What we are looking at has, however, nothing to do with all this.
We are looking at a dance. The kind of dance that only last a second or so. The kind of dance that even the dancers themselves are not aware of. The kind of dance only photography can reveal. How about that!



Photo @ Hollandse Hoogte

A bit strange

I really don't know why I like this photo so much. It is not a good photo by any standard. The composition isn't very bad, but not very good either. The light isn't very interesting. The moment isn't decisive whatsoever. If it were, the woman in the middle should at least look over her shoulder to the guy with the striped tie, and the guy on the left should push up his glasses with his finger, while at the same time the woman on the right would pick up her papers that lie spread over the floor.

On the plus side, there is a famous person in this picture. It's the stripe-tied man in the middle. He is the former Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende, whom I wrote about a few weeks ago. He came to a meeting of his party last saturday to say goodbye to his former voters. On the picture he is talking to one of them, a woman, invisible behind the door.

There is a rule in photojournalism that when you take a photo of Mrs A talking to Mr B, you have to have at least some reference to both persons in the image. One of them may be a shadow, a shape or you may see only a hand, but it has to be absolutely clear that there is a conversation between two people. In this picture, you see Mr Balkenende listening to nothing. You can't even be sure he is listening, he may also be daydreaming, phantasizing or just being temporarily disconnected from reality.

When I pointed my camera at the scene I was standing more to the right, and had both Mr Balkenende and the woman who had addressed him, perfectly in the middle of my frame. If I had pressed the button, I would have had a reasonably OK photo, of an unimportant scene, so a meaningless photo that would have disappeared into the dungeons of one of my hard disks.

I did not press the button. Instead, I moved to the left, and then pressed the button. I still think it was a brilliant move. But I have no idea why.

You may find all this a bit strange. So do I....

You can't see it

Two landscapes. Two places. Both places have a soul. Just like people's souls, you can't see them. Portrait photos are sometimes said to reveal a person's soul. Well, they don't. A soul will not fit on a single photograph.
Can a place have a soul? Yes, I think so. The soul comprises someone's past, present, and someday one's future. You can feel the soul of a place if you contemplate about it's past and it's present, and think about what might be it's future. But you can not see it. You can only think that you see it.



About the photographs:

TOP: The Polish village of Czerna, which was once the German village of Tschirne.
After World war II, the German inhabitants were driven out of their homes and expelled to Germany, to make room for Poles who were driven out of their homes by the Soviets. At the 1945 Potsdam Conference the Allied had decided that Poland had to leave a large territory to the Soviet Union in the East, and gain German territory in the West as compensation. It is estimated that between 0.5 and 3 million ethnic Germans lost their lives during the expulsion.

BOTTOM: The Col de la Schlucht in the Vosges Mountains (France).
After winning the Franco-Prussian War the German Empire annexed the regions of Alsace and Lorraine in 1871. The new border between the two countries followed the heights of the Vosges, and the Schlucht Pass became an important border crossing.
The humiliation of defeat and the loss of territory led to widespread revanchist feelings among the French, which in turn was one of the reasons why France was so eager to go to war in 1914.
At the beginning of the hostilities in 1914, French troops used the Col de la Schlucht and other passes to invade Alsace. Their assault was quickly stopped by the Germans, and the front established a few miles west of the border. The next four years a bloody trench war was fought on the summits of the Vosges Mountains.

Orderly proceedings

The Dutch helicopter crew that was captured by Libyan pro-government forces and held for almost two weeks, after a failed evacuation of two European civilians from Sirte, returned to The Netherlands yesterday after their release two days earlier.

Helicopter pilot Yvonne Niersman's loved one stormed onto the tarmac and the couple fell into each other's arms. Luckily the Commander of the Armed Forces, General Peter van Uhm, quickly intervened and no more disruptions of order were reported.

Photos @Hollandse Hoogte

green green grass

So you live in this village that's surrounded by vast meadowland. Grass, grass, grass, wherever you look.
Now you and your fellow villagers decide you need a place for the kids to play football. Of course, you don't want them to play on the grasslands. There are many dirty things lying around there. So what do you do?

Need I ask? You buy a piece of grassland, strip off the grass, carpet it with artificial turf, and there you go. No more dirty kids.
Oh, and a high fence; you don't want the kids to get sweaty running for a ball that went way over, do you?



Photo available @Hollandse Hoogte (keyword: GV110309A)

Exit

Jan Peter Balkenende was prime minister from 2002 till 2010. He stepped back after his party (the christian-democratic CDA) lost the elections in June 2010.

Two days ago his party lost again severely at the provincial elections. The current leadership optimistically stated that the loss wasn't more severe than the previous one, though.

Mr. Balkenende is now a university professor and a partner at Ernst & Young. His party honors him with a painted portrait, in a hallway of its headquarters. Next to the emergency exit.

Photo available at Hollandse Hoogte (keyword GV110302A)

This is not a traffic sign

This is not a traffic sign. It is a statement. A political statement.

Today is election day in The Netherlands. Today we choose representatives for the provincial administration, who in turn will elect Senate members. The current national government has a minority in Senate, so these are important elections.

For ages the speed limit in The Netherlands has been 120 km/h on motorways. Whatever the speed limit may be, there will always be people who want to go faster, and many of them do.

I have done extensive (though highly unscientific) research lately. My conclusion is that most speeding drivers vote VVD (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, the party of current PM Mark Rutte).

You can never rule out coincidence, but two days before the elections the Minister of Transport (also VVD) announced that on some remote motorways the speed limit would be raised to 130 km/h, coming into effect the next day. 

Democracy has two faces. People may choose those who they trust to rule their country, or people may choose those who give them what they want. 

Politics is balancing between giving people what they want, and not losing the trust of the people who vote for the wise.

Photo available at Hollandse Hoogte (keyword GV110301)

To be cared for

All around the web photo journalists are complaining about the decline of their business. That it's becoming harder and harder to make a living out of it.

The solution is simple. Pick your subjects carefully. Don't fly to problematic countries. Don't work among the poor and suffering. Go where the money is, and you'll be cared for. And it's often just around the corner.

This is what I mean. Just a mile from my home, went there by bike. Costs: zero. Pictures sold: zero. Bonus: free food and drinks, including, of course, champagne.

(It's a product launch of a new mobile network brand targeted at women. All journalists present were men. No wonder I didn't sell any photos.)


Photo available at Hollandse Hoogte (keyword GV110203A)

Märklin

Als je zo van grote hoogte neerkijkt op het pittoreske Sankt Goarshausen ga je die lui van Märklin ineens begrijpen. Als kind vond ik al die huisjes maar raar, er was geen baksteen te zien, en geen ene rooie dakpan. Gewone rijtjeshuizen? Hadden ze niet, en flats ook niet.
Mijn vader had een treinbaan gebouwd, beneden in de kelderbox. Midden op die baan was een dorpje van witte vrijstaande huisjes met zwarte daken, en een wit kerkje met een vierkante toren en een hoge spits. Linksachter was een berg met een tunnel. Ik was een jaar of negen en had nog nooit een echte berg gezien.

En nu zie ik opeens Märklin, daar beneden. Huisjes, treintje, en een echte berg. De spoorlijn is de Rechte Rheinstrecke. Elke vijf minuten raast er een goederentrein overheen. Eine extrem hohe Zugdichte, zegt de Duitse Wikipedia. Wat zou er in die schattige wagonnetjes zitten?

Blij dat ik niet in de wereld van Märklin leef.

Anniversary

Last week people all over the world gathered to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

This is the railroad to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the extermination camp, in 2007:

All photographs ©Goos van der Veen

Please don't steal my work!

Welcome

Welcome to Goos van der Veen's blog.

Goos is a documentary photographer living in The Netherlands. He is particularly interested in the modern landscape (both in his home country as in the rest of the world), but from time to time you may also find him amidst photojournalists covering everyday news. His journalistic work focuses mainly on politics, economy, environment and spatial planning.

As an artist I try to stay as close to reality as I observed it before taking a photo. I will never use filters to create surrealistic effects, nor will I 'repaint' the image in Photoshop.


Here's one of my favorites from 2009:

Parzyce, Poland, 12 August 2009

All photographs ©Goos van der Veen

Please don't steal my work!