I have been a photographer for over thirty-five years. For over thirty-five years I have lived by the IJsselmeer. When I open my eyes in the morning, the first thing I see is the IJsselmeer. Sometimes I take pictures of the sea, but actually seeing it is something else. Until one day a friend said to me: “You live in your own theme”, that’s when the penny dropped. I put a tripod on a certain spot in front of the bedroom window and started looking. To begin with, one is grateful for every sailboat that comes into the picture.
Every intense sky colouring: a photo. But very quickly you start to cut out any distractions from the picture. Everyone who is open to this subject will do so sooner or later. I no longer photograph sailboats, birds or people. I photograph small waves, veils of mist, rain and clouds. These can also be distracting. But they almost always present themselves shapeless, transparent, wet. They are virtually colourless themselves, but they take on the colour of the light that hits them and reflect it. In total, there are sixty photos, they form the IJsselmeer. None of the photos is more beautiful than another. When you look at photos in this way, you lose yourself in pure aesthetics. I’m not looking for aesthetics. I want to photograph the wind or light elements that we can only perceive indirectly. (Wout Berger, excerpt from the artist’s statement in the book)

Wout Berger, *1941 in Ridderkerk, the Netherlands. Lives and works in Uitdam, the Netherlands.