The Dutch have battled the sea for centuries. Twenty percent of the country is land reclaimed from the sea. Without the countless dunes, dykes and various waterworks over half the Netherlands would be frequently submerged. 

This love-hate relationship has resulted in prosperity and innovation as well as some very unique landscapes. That is why The Netherlands is called “A land won from the sea”. It also gave us the famous Dutch saying “God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands”, read more on this from this traveler’s report

Two museums in Amsterdam show historic and current views on how the Dutch relate to ever-rising water around them. Marnix Goossens photographs Dutch ways to keep it dry
, in the Rijksmuseum. Document Nederland: Rising Waters
 is the title of his documentary assignment by the Rijksmuseum and NRC Handelsblad. Goossens has aimed his camera at earthly problems caused by climate change and a rising sea level in a poetic and humorous way of working. 

Water in Photography


As a counterpart and supplement to this exhibition, Huis Marseille presents a small retrospective of water-related photography from the past from the Rijksmuseum’s rich photo collections. In contrast to this ‘engineer’s outlook’, another presentation provides a contemporary view of water as a phenomenon and source of inspiration, with photographs by Balthasar Burkhard, Naoya Hatakeyama, Roni Horn, Asako Narahashi and Syoin Kajii.