Boekpresentatie
Identity and Climate Change in Contemporary Photography - Book Launch
- Date
- Thursday 22 October 2026
- Time
- Address
-
University Library
Witte Singel 27
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- Kartini Auditorium
The Netherlands is at the crossroads of industrial globalisation and climate vulnerability. How does contemporary photography capture shifting attitudes towards Dutch land, water, history, and identity in this context?
Identity and Climate Change in Contemporary Photography: Reframing Netherlandish Landscapes focuses on Dutch landscape and nature, and forms part of the international series Photography, Place, Environment, edited by photography theorist and Professor Emeritus Liz Wells.
Maartje van den Heuvel and Liz Wells have conversations with artists featured in the book, including Kim Boske, Elspeth Diederix, Ellen Kooi, Kadir van Lohuizen, Awoiska van der Molen and Edwin Zwakman. Each conversation relates to one of the chapters of the book. An accompanying pop-up exhibition will feature photographs included in the book from Leiden University Libraries' Special Collections. The event will conclude with drinks.
This event is free to attend. Registration is mandatory.
RegistrationInterdisciplinary lens
Through an interdisciplinary lens, author Maartje van den Heuvel, curator of photography at Leiden University Libraries’ Special Collections, presents and discusses photographs from the Leiden collections and other works, Applying theories from both art history and landscape theory. Van den Heuvel examines how contemporary photography captures shifting attitudes towards Dutch land, water, history, and identity, showing the Netherlands as being at the crossroads of industrial globalisation and climate vulnerability.
The Book
Doctoral research conducted at Leiden University has resulted in the timely volume Identity and Climate Change in Contemporary Photography: Reframing Netherlandish Landscapes, presented by Routledge. The study utilizes Dutch landscape as a case study, exploring the ways in which contemporary projects of landscape photography reflect changing attitudes towards land and nature, in the context of global climate and social change.
The author takes a dual approach, from an art historical angle, against the background of the famous history of Dutch landscape painting, and a cultural geographic dimension, specifically how climate change is altering the understanding of the physical Dutch landscape. Each of the photographic projects in this book, by key contemporary Dutch artists, addresses aspects of these issues in their own way while engaging with both climate change and seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting. Artists featured include Kim Boske, Marie-José Jongerius, Ellen Kooi, Awoiska van der Molen and Edwin Zwakman. The content matter of this book is relevant and of interest for scholars and practitioners in photography, art history, cultural geography, environmental humanities, landscape architecture and Dutch studies.