Sample places

 

There is something special that binds the photographer Inge Stolwijk to the Dutch city called Woerden. A city that for decades has been statistically established as the Most Average Town in the Netherlands. A sort of sample place where to test products, verify researches and so on. Her gaze moves generically across this apparent geographic normality to depict people and spaces as a familiar poetic that feeds on thin details and small identities to make the sky less grey and thick.

 

«I think I have always been more concerned with raising a question than with finding an answer. I am interested in the things in life that we consider to be “normal”, that we see as something certain. In my work I try to make the viewer think twice about these things. I was born and raised in Woerden and I’ve always been amazed by the Average phenomenon. When I started this project, I thought I was trying to show the extraordinary within the things we consider to be ordinary. Later on I came to realize that I was actually trying to find the ‘common’ within the things that we find exceptional. The story is about freedom of identity, or the illusion of freedom we seem to have. The environment – in this case, Holland as a country – has shaped the inhabitants of this town into something that we measure ourselves with; even something we expect answers from. Then again; being average or ordinary is something that in general we’d rather stay away from, though the beauty of the Average is that we all own a certain piece of it. During my research, I came across this short story about a hunter: During his hunt, the hunter shot in front and behind a rabbit. As he returned home empty handed, his wife asked him how the hunt went. He thought it through for a short while and eventually said. ‘Averagely, I shot a rabbit’. Things that are abstract, like “the Average”, also carry a certain lack of control. Are they actually real, or are they just words or numbers, and do they only exist on paper?»

 

 

Photo:

Courtesy of Inge Stolwijk

www.ingestolwijk.nl

(click on the image at right for more pictures)