Zoutelande Through My Lens — Stories in Stillness

Photography is often about more than light and focus — it’s about perspective, emotion, and timing. These four images, taken with my Canon 5D Mark III and Sigma 100–400mm lens, represent a quiet but powerful narrative from last Sunday in Zoutelande.

📸 Image 1: My wife walking away between the wave breakers, avoiding the deeper water where I stood. A moment of everyday humor and love — where practicality meets poetry in motion.

📸 Image 2: A young girl standing alone on a small, sandy island surrounded by water. She gazes out toward the ocean, her solitude and wonder mirroring our own curiosity about the world beyond.

📸 Image 3: Here, lines take over the story — the towering dunes on one side, the endless sea on the other, and a wooden walkway that leads the eye straight to the horizon. Composition meets contemplation.

📸 Image 4: A solitary blue beach cabin, perfectly framed by sand and dune. It stands quiet and grounded — a symbol of stillness amidst the natural elements.

Each photo is a reminder that beauty lies in how we see things — and sometimes, in the space between what is and what could be.

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The winner of the Noorderlicht Award 2025 is… 🥁 Viktoria Stefanova!

The graduation project Lost in Two Eras explores what it means to live in the contradiction between fast-paced digital life and our romantic longing for the slow, simple, and analogue past. Through quiet performance and poetic visuals, the work stages a beautifully slow scroll through nostalgia, glitch, and desire.

The jury praised the project for its simple clarity and performative strength. Viktoria receives a €1,000 prize to support the further development and presentation of her work during the Noorderlicht Biennial Machine Entanglements this summer. CONGRATULATIONS!

An honourable mention goes to Iris van Kalsbeek for The Land Where Animals Kiss — an erotic ecosystem of slow intimacy and fearless sensuality. Go check it out at the Niemeyer factory.

The Academie Minerva and Frank Mohr Institute Graduation Show 2025 is open until 20 June across various locations in Groningen. Don’t miss it!

#NoorderlichtAward #ClassOf2025 #ArtAndTechnology #LensBasedMedia #MachineEntanglements #ViktoriaStefanova #IrisvanKalsbeek