Hof Hoorneman Private Bankers

For Hof Hoorneman, two photographic works were commissioned as gifts for employees. Port of Prosperity reflects on Gouda as a city shaped by water, passage, and trade.

At the point where the Gouwe meets the Hollandse IJssel, a place emerged where movement, exchange, and control came together, and where the city’s economic prosperity was carried for centuries by the water. What was once a vital route for trade and shipping has now taken on a much quieter presence within the city. It is precisely in that contrast between former significance and present appearance that the image finds its charge: an apparently calm site that still holds the memory of wealth, movement, and growth. The second work, Curfew, begins from a much more recent moment. During the pandemic, public life was suddenly restricted, and the curfew imposed on the streets gave the city an unfamiliar emptiness. It was exactly this exceptional condition that made the image possible. Where the city is normally defined by movement, presence, and routine, there was now an almost unreal silence. In Curfew, that temporary state becomes visible as an image of isolation, control, and vulnerability, but also as a rare moment in which urban space revealed itself differently from usual.
Together, the two works connect different moments in the history of Gouda: one looks at the long trajectory of trade, infrastructure, and urban development, while the other captures a recent moment when public life was abruptly brought to a halt. In this way, both photographs show the city as a place where history is never fixed, but continually reappears under changing conditions.