Leaving Amsterdam for Maastricht this morning I felt a sense of longing to return. Having only had one evening of the atmosphere of this eclectic city, I was happy to know that at least tomorrow I will have the canals and architecture in front of my lens.

I am off to Maastricht today to begin the Boxing Project, with the Nederlanse Dansdagen festival.

We will be meeting three established choreographers, who will be working with three young dancers and eventually passing all the information collected to three young choreographers who, will be making dance pieces for the Dansdagen festival in October. Whilst my photography will be exhibited throughout the festival in the inflatable dance house, along with the collection boxes and diaries that we have used to establish the boxing project, the project will be shown to an international audience and have the Mayor of Maastricht present the exhibition to the public.

So, with the journey in hand I have time to look out the window and realise the abundance of greenery that the Netherlands has to offer. The farms and then buildings then again farmlands alternate as I pass through the cities travelling south towards Maastricht.

Architecture is distinctive: square arched roofs, wooden facades! ‘Good’ coloured brickwork, (I do wonder how Pevsner would have described the brick, and indeed the cities), coupled with canal ways and windpowered industrial units. The ‘low’ built housing estates keeping the peace between nature and conurbation.

I have not seen poverty yet and begin to establish my thoughts on the financial climate of the Netherlands. Farmers declaring poverty will be nothing new. At least Amsterdam has a good wealth. It reeks of wealth. Historically I think this to be the case with diamonds, and all of my knowledge ( a total of one Anne Frank film, one B/W film about diamonds and seeing fashion sprout from the city), evidently quite little indeed!

So the journey continues and off out the window now I look holding fast my Leica and Tassotti boxes. Boxing Maastricht begins.

La
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