Mayte Breed  

featured in As Above, So Below

Polderbloem 

If I squeeze my eyes close enough, the waves turn into a pink sea  

rolling into the shore, row after row 

The tourists become little crawling ants  

And their camera flashes are warming sunbeams peeking through the clouds 

My hometown Egmond is located in the heart of the tulip fields in the Netherlands. Each season I could see the changing colours of the fields through our window and with it, the business of my neighbour. They ended their family business last year and started to break down the bulb shed I had been looking at throughout my life. As the walls collapsed, the inside slowly started to unravel, which became the starting point for my project.  

Polderbloem is a photographic investigation into each stage of the tulip cycle in The Netherlands. Through new imagery and found footage I shed light on the transformation that has occurred over time. From its status as a wealth symbol in 1600 to its current state as a mass product. From a bulb with the worth of an Amsterdam canal house to something widely available. I realize that it has become an empty industry, where the symbol of the flower no longer plays a role and where the future of the tulip cannot be guaranteed. But what remains when there is no actual presence of the flower?

Previous work
from Trickle Publication

Skeuomorph 

Will artificial nature replace real nature?
Connecting to nature is seen as a primal necessity in life, but with cities being shaped around the needs of its inhabitants, this often results in a lack of nature. At the same time of this decrease, we see that artificial nature made their entrance into our world. Studies have found that exposure to artificial nature can contribute to our physical and mental well-being in the same way real nature does. In my work I search for artificial nature that resembles nature in the public space, to question the possibilities of artificial nature replacing real nature.

Contact:

Maytebreed@live.nl
@mightymayt