“To be Dutch means that you must live with water” – Renée Jones-Bos
Last year photographer Douglas McCarthy, whose work in the Thames Estuary has featured previously on Caught by the River, relocated to the Netherlands. His latest series is set on a modernist housing estate in the Mariahoeve district of The Hague. In quintessentially Dutch fashion, the landscaping of the estate skilfully balances earth and water, with a network of drainage channels and ponds interspersed by apartment buildings.
Like much of Douglas’s work, these images explore the interplay between man and nature. A single exposure juxtaposes the natural, fluid, organic environment of the water’s surface with the artificial, rigid geometry of the architecture reflected in it. The dynamics of nature are contrasted with man’s attempt to impose order on his life and environment, nature’s mirror offering an alternative assessment of the success of such an enterprise.
