Snelweg > Highways in the Netherlands

Around 1994 Theo Baart and I decided to once more work together on a new project. Since our mutual interest was the rapid transition of the Netherlands we choose the Dutch Highway landscape in all it's manifestations as our subject. It took some time funding the project as nobody could imagine that this ugly grid of asphalt could be an interesting subject.

In 1996 the exhibition Snelweg > Highways in the Netherlands opened in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam and generated a lot of attention in the media. Mostly because of the subject-matter, later the project was recognized for the eclectic form of the design of book and exhibition.

In order to publish Snelweg>Highways in the Netherlands as we envisioned it (text by Tracy Metz, design by Typography & Other Serious Matters) we had to establish our own publishing house named Ideas on Paper. The book (ed. 2750) soon sold out. Snelweg>Highways in the Netherlands was included in the Martin Parr and Gerry Badger critical survey The Photobook: A History - Volume 2 (Phaidon 2006) and in The Dutch Photobook (co-published by NAi Publishers and Aperture, 2012). The installation has been exhibited in several incarnations from New York to Munich and from Moscow to Otterlo, most recently in 2017 in the Fondation Cartier in Paris as part of the Auto-Photo exhibition. Below a selection of my photographs.