Giant Labour

Commissioned by Stadsarchief Rotterdam, Hans Wilschut made four new photographs for the exhibition Reuzenarbeid. 150 Years of the Nieuwe Waterweg in Photography in Hoek van Holland. Curated by Willem van der Ham and Joop de Jong, the exhibition brought together historical and contemporary photography around the development of the Nieuwe Waterweg and the surrounding area, a landscape that has been reshaped time and again.

For his contribution, Wilschut focused on Hoek van Holland as a place where infrastructure, recreation and everyday use meet. From a cherry picker, he photographed the new beach entrance and metro station, an intervention that connects the seaside town more directly to the city of Rotterdam. The elevated viewpoint reveals how mobility, the coastal landscape and public space converge. He also photographed the car boot sale in Hoek van Holland, where cars, goods, visitors and temporary displays create a rhythm of their own. Set against the larger scale of port, railway, coast and waterway, this informal and lively economy appears as another form of movement, trade and exchange. With these four images, Wilschut added a contemporary layer to the story of the Nieuwe Waterweg. His photographs do not present a nostalgic image of the coast, but a landscape in use: practical, changeable and full of traces of human activity.