Theo Baart : Werklust

de Theo Baart

For 40 years, and with a sense of fascination, Theo Baart has been photographing the fate of the landscape of his youth: the area near Schiphol Airport. Nowhere else in the Netherlands is the landscape under so much pressure; all the themes relating to spatial planning come to a head in this region, in a magnified form. From a personal perspective, Baart describes in words and pictures how an agricultural area has been seamlessly welded into the Amsterdam metropolitan area, as the result of urbanization and the effects of globalization. He talks about the demolition of the suburb in the context of the plans for the centre of Hoofddorp, and the flooding of a once-empty polder with major infrastructure. Theo Baart photographs the everyday landscape, with its housing developments, highways and shopping centres, as a mirror of Dutch culture. 'Werklust' shows how the Dutch landscape has been completely turned on its head over the past 40 years, based on a single striking and personal example.