WATER IN FIRE

I was born on the island of Rozenburg, a wind-swept enclave in the heart of the port of Rotterdam, encircled by refineries, giant oil tankers, cranes rising like cathedrals, beneath the flare stacks that burn through sleepless nights.

In this country that has, for centuries, lived from the sea and stood against it, I learned the fervor of the open water and the patience of the dikes.

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In 1953 came the Watersnoodramp. A storm tide tore through the dikes of Zeeland, South Holland, and North Brabant; the waters claimed 1,836 lives, swept away entire homes, and forced nearly 72,000 souls into exile.

From that disaster was born the titanic Deltawerken — a colossal work chasing the relentless rise of the sea, that same sea which, day after day, threatens my native land.

It was from the accumulation of oxymorons that Water in Fire was born: the violent beauty of factories, the fragile strength of dikes, the dark light of flare stacks, the thunderous silence of shipyards, the tamed yet untamable sea — water in fire.
From these opposites, one truth emerges: grace also exists in collision.

To reveal these haunting paradoxes, I crossed the boundary of photography. I sought moving images — images that breathe — to affirm my faith in their strength, their power, their poetry. To return to the origins of cinema: images without words, leaving imagination its sovereign share.

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Apolline, the heroine of Water in Fire, undergoes an initiatory journey, a dreamlike catharsis, by embracing these oxymorons of fire, water, metal, and wind. She loses herself in them, feels their paroxysm, climbs the circles of hell, and is at last carried into a world ruled only by earth, water, and wind — revealing their full might.

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A castle as a threshold.
Watchtowers as guides.
The sea as horizon.
The sea as ordeal.
Creatures, strange and unearthly, as ferrymen.
To open the kingdom within her.