Biography

1956	Winnifred Limburg is born on 30 October 1956 in Purmerend. He sees the town where he was born transform into a suburban city of modern buildings merging with the outskirts of Amsterdam. At the age of nine, Limburg receives eyeglasses with negative lenses: he now discovers that in his world, which previously consisted only of details and fragments, there is also a horizon in the distance.
1974	Limburg initially wants to be a forest ranger or a sculptor. Following the completion of secondary school, however, he starts work as a psychiatric nurse. He does a lot of reading and drawing. He spends his first earnings on a camera, with which he photographs everything in sight.
1980	Following military service, Limburg decides to study photography at the Sint Joost Academy in Breda. He is a loner: he has no affinity with the work of others and is not inspired by the teachers’ lessons.
1986	Limburg graduates with painterly and abstract ‘free’ work that serves as a starting point for his later photographic development. He establishes himself as a ‘photographer on commission’ (landscapes and interiors) and as a ‘free’ photographer.
1987	Limburg’s entry to the Kodak competition is awarded with an honourable mention from Kodak Award Nederland. This work is exhibited at the K61 Gallery in Amsterdam. In the same year, he produces the photographic work Werklust (‘Working Drive’) for the employment agency Randstad. Sarting in this year, Limburg takes part in various group exhibitions.
1988	Limburg works on his first assemblage, the photography project Stad (‘City’), a free commission from the ‘Raad voor de Kunst’ (‘Council of the Arts’) in Amsterdam.
1988–‘95	Limburg is commissioned to take photos for various book covers of the publishing house Querido.
1989	Limburg receives the free photo assignment Fotografische werkelijkheid/letterlijkheid (‘Photographic Reality/Literalness’) of the AFK (Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, ‘Amsterdam Fund for the Arts’).
1990-‘91	Limburg produces his first major works, Vliegtuig (‘Airplane’) and Tafel (‘Table’). He assembles square fragments of photographs, which when seen from a distance, form an image. These works are Cibachrome contact prints of his assemblages.
1991	Limburg takes part in Plastic Photography, the photography biennial of Enschede.
1992	Limburg is commissioned by the Stichting Stedelijke Fotografie Utrecht (‘Utrecht Urban Photography Foundation’) to photograph the post office building on the Neude in Utrecht.
1993	Limburg begins exploring and elaborating on the Dutch water landscape. Over the years, this theme becomes his specialty.
	Limburg receives the free photo assignment Landschapsherinrichtingen/assemblages (‘Landscape Renovations/Assemblages) of the AFK.
1994-‘96	Limburg makes a series of eight photos, Mijn Tuin (‘My Garden’), in which enlarged objects from everyday life appear within a vast panorama as evocative objects or magical signs.
1995	The Amsterdam jewellery designer Ruudt Peters commissions Limburg to take six photograps of his work as well as the cover for his catalogue Ouroboros.
	Limburg receives a solo exhibition at the Marzee Gallery in Nijmegen.
	In the same year, Limburg participates in the exhibition Een zomerlied in 30 coupletten (‘A Summer Song in 30 Couplets’), held at the Van Reekum Museum in Apeldoorn, which has already acquired various large-format photographic works by Limburg.
1996	Limburg receives a solo exhibition in the gallery of Barends & Pijnappel in Antwerp. Physical illness temporarily prevents him from doing his photographic work.
1998	With three new works in a medium format—Eiland aan Zee (‘Island on the Sea’), Waterval aan Zee (‘Waterfall on the Sea’) and Heuvels aan Zee (‘Hills on the Sea’)—Limburg takes part in the exhibition Niet de Kunstvlaai (‘Not the Art Flan’) at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam.
	Hereafter, a new period begins, during which Limburg experiments with the photographic potential of digital technology. This approach results in an all-embracing tonality, placing his work at the crossroads of photography and painting.
1998	Limburg works on a large photographic landscape with the computer, in which various aspects of his earlier work come together.

Discussion

Winnifred Limburg photographs landscapes, devising situations that do not actually exist, but which ‘could have been true’. With his assembled photos, he blends reality and fiction to create a new totality. Limburg translates the discrepancy between the existing landscape and his vision of nature into works in which photography enters a charged relationship with art.

Initially, Limburg highlights the artificial aspects of his photography by painting his negatives and intentionally allowing the edges of his cutting and pasting to be seen. Applying computer technology, he discovers that fragments can flow seamlessly into one another. In doing so, he is able to create landscapes that are fantastical, and yet still typically Dutch. The perspective spaces that he devises in this manner are then presented to his viewers: a landscape in which the observer can wander endlessly, forming his own value judgements. It is through this working approach that Winnifred Limburg can perhaps best be classified as the epitome of a ‘free photographer’.

As a student at the Sint Joost Academy, Limburg is a loner. He has no affinity with the work of other students, nor with the work of those that would later become known as the photographers of the ‘Rotterdam School’, such as Gerald van der Kaap, Bas Vroege, and Ruurd van der Noord. Similarly, he finds nothing in the lessons that stimulates him. For Limburg, the academy is little more than a workshop with technical facilities, which he uses to his full advantage. He masters the technique of photography by working with large-format cameras and experimenting in the darkroom with artificial colour. This results in work that is painterly and rather abstract: e.g. a triangle against a colourised background or a boulder with textures scratched in, resting in spotty painted surroundings. Following his days at the academy, the colourising and scratching of negatives leads to new experiments.

After establishing himself as a ‘photographer on commission’ (landscapes and interiors) and as ‘free photographer’, Limburg finds working on commission not to his liking. His autonomous experiments—combining fragments and later pasting negatives to each other—evolve into an unmistakeable personal style.

Limburg’s photos for his final exam were products of situations taken from everyday life. He combined objects into simple, but monumental compositions. They appear as short stories that, like fairy tales, as well imply something sinister. Examples are: a photo of a knife that pierces a soccer ball; a cucumber, with a shard of glass forming the wings; and a zeppelin in the air being attacked by flying cucumbers and carrots that still have their greens.

When Winnifred Limburg and his partner, the artist Carolein Smit, purchase a house, they undertake a major renovation that includes both a workshop and a photo studio. In the eight-part series Mijn Tuin (‘My Garden’), he places enlarged objects used in everyday life—such as a flashlight or a garden trowel—as magical signs in vast panoramas. With this series, the combining of fragments expands into a complex working process that includes countless shots pieced together. After 1990, he continues with these experiments in several larger assemblages and works made from an increasing number of components.

The photo Tafel (‘Table’), for instance, is a contact print of an assemblage made from twenty-five prints of colourised 4×5 inch negatives. The photo is compiled from fragments of buildings: portions of the columns on the Maas Boulevard and of the bridge near the Nieuwe Waterweg in Rotterdam form one leg; the other leg is made up of a combination of part of the tower of the sugar factory in Zevenbergen with the top of the light tower of Willemsstad. The individual shots are sometimes incorporated upside down or turned. From close up, one sees a collage of a variety of shots in the photo; seen from farther away, however, a representation emerges of a bright red table floating in the air. The assemblage Vliegtuig (‘Airplane’) is also made up of twenty-five square parts taken from photos having the same format. In this assemblage, Limburg incorporates photos of architecture as well as other subjects: the fuselage is put together from a lake that flows into a stainless steel tube, into aluminium tent poles, a viaduct on the A16 highway, a piece of PVC-tubing, after that moving to a shot of two pairs of paints and four socks, and finishing with part of a wood saw. The wings are a compilation of parts of a breadknife, a stubble field at Hellegat, the sound barrier near Couwelaar, and a serrated tomato knife. In these two photos, Limburg experiments with a great number of possibilities that he discovers while he works. The data for the locations of the various shots likewise form a document accompanying the new, constructed whole.

The assemblage Postkantoor Neude (‘Post Office Neude’, 1992-93), which Limburg made on commission, is made up of approximately 1,000 shots and has more of a narrative character. The exterior of the building is broken open, as it were, by both small and large assembled photos of the interior: inside and outside are combined and turned around, together with portraits of people who work in the building and those visiting.

An interesting component of Limburg’s work after 1993 are his various water landscapes: series of photos with titles such as Meren (‘Lakes’), Rivier (‘River’), Watervallen (‘Waterfalls’) and Eilanden (‘Islands’). For Watervallen, Limburg shot hundreds of photos at a variety of locations: from IJmuiden to Burculo and from Loenen to Roermond. A significant number of these water landscapes were produced along the Veluwezoom, a landscape that had previously inspired many artists in the nineteenth century. To construct his landscapes, Limburg incorporates all kinds of bodies of water, creeks, cascades and water curtains—both in close-up and in their totality—as well as parts of the forest marshes, gullies, ponds, water courses, canals and channels that, along with the coasts and the fields, collectively form the Dutch landscape. His stories about the Dutch landscape have become more complex, both in technical terms and in content. In this work, Limburg reveals a clear preference for the panorama: the biggest vistas, where the horizon is never the limit. ‘Vastness does not end at the horizon,’ as he is known to have said. Within these self-constructed spaces he inserts stopping places—buildings, bridges, boats and animals—that reduce these distances to more human proportions. In this complex composite, the observer can find his way through the contrasts: large–small, close–distant, above–under, whole–parts, visual material–representation, and reality–fiction. These contrasts lead one through the typical Dutch landscapes, which, in spite of the photo’s artificial character, could very well have been ‘real’. The photographer is an artist, making fictitious landscapes or photographed daydreams. Memories, events, animals and objects are bestowed a place in the subject at hand. Limburg prefers to represent his passion for nature and animals in an ironic manner.

In his early period, Limburg produced photos of landscapes based on sketches. He cut the sketch into parts, which he then pasted onto the matte glass of his camera in order to find a piece of landscape that fit. To achieve this, he travelled across the country taking a large number of shots. In the event of an unusual find or event, he allowed the composition to change as he went along. In retrospect, such a working approach might seem time-consuming and inefficient. The ultimate result, however, is a tangible and well-documented archive. Moreover, by studying the Dutch landscape and the flora and fauna that live in it, Limburg has accumulated a vast knowledge of the characteristic landscapes, places, bodies of water, plants, and animals. On the basis of his experience, he now photographs in a fixed format, always ensuring that the perspective is suitable for the total image of the assemblage to be constructed. Limburg accounts for the width of the stream: sometimes it appears as if parts of these landscapes have previously been conjoined in his thoughts. He occasionally makes prints in a given format, in order to fit the parts of various shots together more readily. Further adjustments and refinements can be made during enlargement or when using the computer.

To take his shots, Limburg uses a 4×5 inch camera and a 35 mm camera with black-and-white negative film. He paints the negatives, applying colours that complement that match the actual situation. He then takes the negatives and prints them in mirror image on colour paper. Next, he cuts the prints and pieces them together to create a total image. The finishing is done using egg-white azure blue and watercolour paint. The entire assemblage is then contact printed on Cibachrome at a photo laboratory and pasted on aluminium. The effect of the colouring and scratching of the negatives results in a recognisable style. Limburg intentionally leaves the cutting and pasting edges of his assemblages in view, in order to emphasise the artificiality of the constructed landscape. In his initial years, the pieces that make up the assemblage are still more or less square; he also places the various shots directly adjacent each other. Later, Limburg shifts his emphasis to the way in which images are assembled: he cuts out objects—a tree, a waterfall, or a sheep—in such a manner that curved intersecting lines emerge, with pieces fitting into each other as in a puzzle. The linear intersections of the cut pieces travel along the relief of the landscape like meridians.

In the photographic works that Limburg produces with the computer, he can insert a detail of an embankment that has been digitally enlarged and erase excess parts of a piece that has been added. This enables him to make flowing transitions, with all fragmentation disappearing: as such, the pieces become totally integrated, creating a tonality that predominates completely, just as in a painting. This results in a compact, instantaneous experience. With the computer, the possibilities begin to multiply, giving Limburg more creative leeway. Scale is no longer important, because parts components can be enlarged to gigantic proportions. Using a computer pen textures can arise, for instance, by conjuring up leaves or water. He can make running water flow in any direction he desires; he can turn a sea into water rapids or the other way around.

This leeway requires playing rules. One such rule is the ‘limitation of use’: if one element of a certain shot has already been incorporated, nothing else from this image can be used in a successive work, so as to avoid the danger of repetition. From this process of incorporating nature, a cultural landscape arises in which the leeway for nature itself gradually diminishes. Limburg depicts interventions in the landscape through the process of burning, one of the recurring themes in his work, which refers to the transitory nature of landscape. For instance, photographs of burning cotton balls have been inserted into a number of works. One important point of reference for Limburg is the ‘failliet van Purmerend’ (‘bankruptcy of Purmerend’), as he labels the changes affecting the city where he was born: the filling up of the canal where Rhine barges used to be towed by tiny boats, the construction of major highways, and the newly built neighbourhoods that have turned Purmerend into a suburb. Here a landscape has been created ‘in which even the smallest of bends seems romantic.’

One also encounters all sorts of floating objects in the different water landscapes. Real boats travel along with strangely concocted boats down the river that meanders through the fields towards the horizon. In Vliegtuig (‘Airplane’), all kinds of existing bird sorts share the sky with modern airplanes.

Flying is also a process that intrigues Limburg. Moving through the air goes faster, creating a monumental panorama. In his photographic work, he aims to reduce the abstract concept of ‘distance’—the bridging of kilometres in time—down to matter, to the reality of a visual distance.

Processes such as sailing, flying, and incineration recur in his photographic works, but always in other translations, referring to opposites such as nature and culture, travelling and staying, the straight line and the laws of nature.

Limburg’s landscapes are not represented as static images. A memory, in his view, never consists of only one fragment of what has been seen: the ‘undergoing of something’ is dynamic—just as a favourite landscape is not to be understood in terms of a single image. In his work Limburg stitches places together, as occurs when looking around. By assembling parts of the landscape with images in which the perspective differs slightly, nature is experienced in terms of its spatial quality.

Shifting perspectives and contrasts—far away and close up, north and south, east and west—turn observation into a visual journey, as if you are standing in the landscape. Both details and virtual spaces arise as invitations to choose which path the observer’s eyes wish to follow.

The piercing of objects, an underlying theme from Limburg’s early period, are now translated into landscapes that flow into each other: the conceived perspectives diverge from the narrow path of reality.

With fragments and shots, Limburg creates a new and complex whole. He knows his classics and extends—consciously or unconsciously—a tradition in the footsteps of the outsiders of the nineteenth century, such as Oscar Rejlander and H.P. Robinson. These pioneering montage photographers sometimes combined even twenty different negatives to depict their narrative and toyed with the capacity of realism inherent to photography. Unintended effects that arose from the blending of camera angles through montage as applied in early photography—such as in the famous sunset of 1860 taken by Le Gray—are purposefully introduced by Limburg. This mixing of perspectives raises the level of spaciousness and creates a disorienting effect.

Limburg utilises these and other technical possibilities, such as scratching, colourising and assembling, in order to shape his play with the reality of photography. Moreover, the collage has long been seen as an excellent means to express commentary, e.g. for artist such as Paul Citroen, Hannah Hoch and Georg Grosz. Limburg uses such a combining of images to approach the subject of the transitory landscape. Since his early youth, he has seen the natural landscape change into an environment that is thoroughly artificial. Through his constructions, Limburg builds up landscapes to once again show the beauty that has been lost due to human intervention. His work is also in line with the free artistic photography that emerged in the 1970s in Europe. Similarities can be observed with a number of pieces by David Hockney, Gilbert and George, as well as the early work of Ger Dekkers in the early 1980s.

In the 1970s, the photographers Lee Friedlander, Franco Fontana, and Ralph Gibson—who all take photos that resemble abstract paintings—particularly inspired Limburg. Mirrored images, reflections, and abstract structures toy with what is ‘real’ and what is ‘not real’ and aestheticize the landscape in a unique way.

Photos by people such as Penn, Joel Meyerowitz, and Stephen Shore, as well as the early films of Peter Greenaway, are seen by Limburg as sources of inspiration. In addition, he admires landscape painters throughout centuries past, and particularly, the painter Ruysdael. Besides photography and art, anything that is new and surprising—ranging from theatre and music to the natural sciences and social phenomena—can stimulate him to new ideas.

Limburg has developed his own form, one in which the technique he invented provides the answer to questions formulated himself. Where travelling across the Netherlands in search of ‘the piece that fit’ was initially the most labour-intensive part of his work, today it is the processing, the variations, and making choices that consume the most time. Design and content go hand in hand and reinforce each other. Limburg rearranges and reorganises fragments of the landscape like a sculptor; and like a forest ranger, he watches over this process. The painting of negatives gives a strong cohesion to shots that are taken under varying lighting conditions. Through colourisation, he adds a summer glow to winter landscapes that include bare branches, cut-down trees, and ice crystals. ‘The past’ is filled with beautiful memories, and in his photos, it is always summer.

Limburg’s first steps in the world of digital photography make it possible for his compiled landscapes to merge in a painterly composite. Elements such as the blending of different perspectives and the conjuring up of objects and animals are now introduced in a more subtle manner. With his self-imposed game rules—every time he discovers new possibilities—Limburg takes his development in a direction that continually sheds new light on his vision of the transitory landscape. The significance of Winnifred Limburg’s photography lies in the distinctive manner in which he applies photography and in his personal approach to depicting his subject: the transitory landscape. His work brings to mind a poem by Marsman, entitled ‘Heel Holland wordt herinnerd in een groot geheel’ (‘All of Holland is remembered in a big totality’)—a summarisation of Winnifred Limburg’s oeuvre.

Documentation