There's nothing like a good ol' Dutch landscape to make you feel better... The Dutch landscape, I find, is very underappreciated (especially by us Dutch speaking people). The beauty in this landscape doesn't rely on the mountains or high attitudes of skyscrapers, but on the simplicity of smooth fields devided like a quilted blanket. On a clear day there's nothing stopping you to take a look on the other side of the country. You just have to peek sidewards and a view that reaches kilometers into the distance with only a windmill or two to block your sight. Or at least that's the "real" Ducth landscape. Like any other "real" landscape, this isn't the whole truth. The truth is, where I for instance live, it doesn't always look as beautiful as here depicted. Yes everything's flat and there are indeed cows chewing grass on meadow behind my house, but not in such a grand way done here.

The thing is I believe, as it'll be in every country, when you get to showcase your environment to others as if it being a solid representative of your country, this would be it. This or like the flower fields and maybe even a postcard from Amsterdam to showcase that we're also "modern" and such. As we all know, it isn't the whole truth. Same goes with France, whereby Paris will be chosen as its precursor and the Eiffel Tower as being the only thing that it can offer you. Well, it isn't really. We all know that, but everytime we see the Eiffel Tower we see Paris, France, a baguet and people wearing stripes. It's just the way they do!


I find it interesting the many ways we can associate one picture with another and incorperate it into some sort of stigma or figuration that'll forever be together. Like swans or two circles that are attached to eachother. They belong together, according to nature and according to us. This isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong, it's just very interesting how images can speak as much as they do and sometimes tell us as little, but represent as much that it's even incomprehensible to the one who's made it. Some images, like the Eiffel Tower and windmills etc, are bombarded at us and are as much man-made as the thing it's depicting. But it makes us think and even create more context surrounding it by the associations we've related to it. A picture of me standing in a meadow can even change meaning when I for instance say that after this picture was taken a stork pooped on my head. It didn't. But it would influence the picture. The information we've been given and our own associations with the image can give the picture context that isn't necessarily the truth but can feel that way when argued correctly (how do we know how people in the prehistory lived? Well, through archaeological excavations we find stuff that we relate to other stuff that we know and make a guessing of what might've, could've, maybe, perhaps have happened and how they lived etc etc).



To a certain image we relate or reflect the essets or maybe even essentails of where we stand (or stood) in time and all that seem important to us (now or then). Knowledge has naturally a great influence on this, but also just time. Time changes our perspectives and perception on things and the images we circulate with it (or think is appropiate to broadcast as a representative of something. For instance the bits of clips I've edited together in the video -linked above-. This is, I find, a good representative of the day, but maybe my mum or dad would think otherwise because they've experienced it differently (obvious example: my dad was driving and my mum sat next to my dad and I was sat in the back of the car and... you get what I mean, right?)).


Oh well, you can never look through the eyes of another, but I think we can all agree on that this landscape is doing the right thing...

Love,
Dominique

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