Photo © Tamar van Haastrecht
Creative - NOMINEE: Tamar van Haastrecht
ondonopo
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The imaginary world of ondonopo exists beneath the ice of the North Pole.
Born out of a bedtime story told by my father, ondonopo has grown into a large universe of
my imagination in which you can enter ice caves by jumping barefoot into geysers and polar bears fall out of a hole in the sky. But as I grow older, the universe slowly starts to melt away.
While on the one hand these images were created in order to try to preserve my own childhood fantasy, on the other hand, they bring attention to very relevant questions regarding the way we treat our actual surroundings.
Would we take more action to stop global warming if a place like Ondonopo would exist? Or would it be as underappreciated as the North Pole is now? Does nature have to serve some kind of purpose, for an effort to be made? And will we be able to create our own artificial nature, if the one we have slowly disappeared?
About author:
‘My photographic work mostly evolves around ‘what if’ questions. What if a tsunami hit the Netherlands? What if Bosnian youth would rebuild the Olympic bobsleigh track into a marble rolling track? What if we could keep our childhood fantasies alive as adults? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As someone who over-analyzes every situation, these very particular questions sometimes pop into my head. Since I can’t let them go after I’ve asked them, I decided it’s best to research the possibilities. What if it would actually happen? Or did it already happen? In my work, I try to answer these questions. Because if I do, not only will I know just a bit more about our world, but other people might too.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Although the questions guiding my work are rooted in reality, I don’t always show
reality in my images. I choose whatever “reality” is necessary to answer my questions.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
In this way, I use alternative realities to tell something about our own. At the same time, I don’t only play with the border between reality and fiction in my way of working, it is also one of my reoccurring subject matters.
With my work, I want to invite the viewer inside my personal “cabin in the treetops” to show them a possibly different outlook on what we’re used to. I hope for them to leave with new questions, and their eyes wide open to see the fantastic possibilities in our reality.’
Tamar van Haastrecht (1995) is a recent graduate from the photography department of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. She lives and works as a freelance photographer in The Hague, The Netherlands.
Born out of a bedtime story told by my father, ondonopo has grown into a large universe of
my imagination in which you can enter ice caves by jumping barefoot into geysers and polar bears fall out of a hole in the sky. But as I grow older, the universe slowly starts to melt away.
While on the one hand these images were created in order to try to preserve my own childhood fantasy, on the other hand, they bring attention to very relevant questions regarding the way we treat our actual surroundings.
Would we take more action to stop global warming if a place like Ondonopo would exist? Or would it be as underappreciated as the North Pole is now? Does nature have to serve some kind of purpose, for an effort to be made? And will we be able to create our own artificial nature, if the one we have slowly disappeared?
About author:
‘My photographic work mostly evolves around ‘what if’ questions. What if a tsunami hit the Netherlands? What if Bosnian youth would rebuild the Olympic bobsleigh track into a marble rolling track? What if we could keep our childhood fantasies alive as adults? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As someone who over-analyzes every situation, these very particular questions sometimes pop into my head. Since I can’t let them go after I’ve asked them, I decided it’s best to research the possibilities. What if it would actually happen? Or did it already happen? In my work, I try to answer these questions. Because if I do, not only will I know just a bit more about our world, but other people might too.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Although the questions guiding my work are rooted in reality, I don’t always show
reality in my images. I choose whatever “reality” is necessary to answer my questions.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
In this way, I use alternative realities to tell something about our own. At the same time, I don’t only play with the border between reality and fiction in my way of working, it is also one of my reoccurring subject matters.
With my work, I want to invite the viewer inside my personal “cabin in the treetops” to show them a possibly different outlook on what we’re used to. I hope for them to leave with new questions, and their eyes wide open to see the fantastic possibilities in our reality.’
Tamar van Haastrecht (1995) is a recent graduate from the photography department of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. She lives and works as a freelance photographer in The Hague, The Netherlands.