Faces of farming

Under the auspices of ‘2003 - Year of the Farm’, SKOR commissioned a number of Dutch and foreign photographers to produce work on the theme ‘Faces of Farming’.
The Dutch landscape is changing from production to consumption. As a result of scaling-up, environmental issues and shifts in the European and global agrarian economy, many of the traditional farms are disappearing. The various artists invited for ‘Faces of Farming’ visualised this issue by zooming in on a certain region or province. Photographs taken by Cas Oorthuys and W.F. van Heemskerck Düker in the Forties and Fifties, from the Netherlands Photo Museum archive, served as reference and inspiration in showing the changes that have taken place in the Dutch countryside.

The photographs by all the participating photographers were presented in the summer of 2003 at twelve farms across the whole country. SLOOM designed various forms of presentation based on the characteristics of each location, thus emphasising the nature of both the photographic work and the location of the farms and farmyards.

The photo projects were shown together with photographs by Oorthuys and Van Heemskerck Düker in the exhibition Mixed Farming in the Netherlands Photo Museum in Rotterdam from 28 February until 24 July 2004. The exhibition was curated by Maartje van den Heuvel and likewise designed by SLOOM. SKOR has also published a book about the project.
The series of photographic commissions falls within a larger plan by SKOR to regularly depict the changes in the Dutch landscape, thereby developing a tradition of Northern documentary photography.
(see also www.sloom.org)