Riot Police intervenes during unauthorised protest on Museumplein
door AT5
The Silent City (1)
Silent city
You almost have to get it back. Those first few days. The ministers in charge were on television. All of the Netherlands watched. The cafes had to close, we weren’t allowed to be together anymore, not with our parents, friends, we had to stay inside and work from home. Crisis. I watched that press conference and had the feeling that one night my father took me out of bed again and told me that my mother was dead. I was twelve. A mixture of deep fear and freedom. Alienation that became a second skin. That’s the way it was for me now. Everything was like there were people, but they were nowhere. Amsterdam was a backdrop, in which you could place history almost tangible. Overcoming the feeling of fear. Surrendering to that emptiness. The beauty and the space to fill in. Everything else is hidden. The lonely figure is the one you don’t see.
Nicole Segers, May 2020
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Nicole Segers (1960) is an autonomous/documentary photographer and works as a mentor and coach at the Photo Academy in Amsterdam. Her work is mainly realized in long-term projects. She makes books and exhibitions, among others for De Kunsthal in Rotterdam, BredaPhoto and Festival Photoreporter (F). She is currently completing her trilogy across the borders of Europe on which she has worked with writer and journalist Irene van der Linde for the past twenty years. This autumn Bloed en honing – ontmoetingen op de grenzen van de Balkan (Blood and honey – encounters on the borders of the Balkans) will be published by Boom Publishers. Segers regularly photographs for De Groene Amsterdammer.
www.nicolesegers.com
by Nicole Segers
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