02 july 2026, Flor Linckens
Ballon Rouge: photography at NN North Sea Jazz Festival
This year, North Sea Jazz celebrates its 50th anniversary at Rotterdam Ahoy. For that reason, the festival, known as the NN North Sea Jazz Festival since 2018, has a particularly festive atmosphere this year. As in previous editions, the programme is complemented by a visual arts section. Ballon Rouge is set to present a selection of photography by Vivian Ammerlaan, Marlike Marks and Dineke Versluis.
Vivian Ammerlaan's work stems from an attempt to approach the sublime: that ambiguous feeling of awe and unease that arises when beauty becomes almost too overwhelming to grasp. Inspired by vast landscapes and natural phenomena, Ammerlaan works with analogue and digital photography, occasionally complemented by video or installation. Her practice is rooted in a paradox: she deliberately seeks to capture what cannot truly be represented. She knows that this endeavour is destined to fail, yet it is precisely within that tension that her 'delusional places' emerge, material impressions of landscapes suspended somewhere between memory, imagination and reality. At the NN North Sea Jazz Festival, Ammerlaan presents a new series of large-scale cyanotypes, inspired by a journey she made through the Rocky Mountains last year. For this series, she works with negatives of self-created landscapes. She then treats the cyanotypes with tea and coffee, producing subtle tonal variations of deep blues and warm earthy browns. Her work was previously exhibited at the Noordbrabants Museum, Singer Laren and Museum Kranenburgh and is part of the collections of the Dutch Government and the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation. She studied photography at AKV St. Joost in Breda.
The photographs of Marlike Marks, founder of Ballon Rouge, grow out of a sustained and attentive observation of her surroundings. By returning to the same places over extended periods, she experiences the continual transformation of the landscape, the changing light and the passing seasons, while becoming increasingly aware of the evolution of her own gaze. Working with analogue photography and natural light, she explores themes such as transience and the rhythms of nature. Her quiet, contemplative images invite viewers to slow down and notice details that might otherwise go unnoticed. At the NN North Sea Jazz Festival, Marks presents new work that she created over the past year, shown here for the first time. This series reflects her fascination with the cyclical nature of time. Marks graduated cum laude from the Nederlandse Academie voor Beeldcreatie (Dutch Academy for Image Creation). Her work has been exhibited at Fotofestival Naarden, Rotterdam Photo, Huis van de Fotografie and Art Centre Schiedam. Her photography was published in NRC, PF Magazine and Monthly Photography Magazine (South Korea).
In her practice, Dineke Versluis explores how photographs can acquire new meanings once they are removed from their original context. During her road trips, she photographs landscapes where human presence is absent or only indirectly perceptible, but she also captures places where people live, work and spend their free time. These photographs, together with archival imagery, form the foundation of her ongoing project "Connecting Landscapes". At the NN North Sea Jazz Festival, Versluis also presents works from her "Post Studies" series. Versluis studied at the Fotoacademie Amsterdam and has exhibited her work in the Netherlands and abroad in recent years. In 2025, she presented her first solo exhibition at Ballon Rouge, followed by a presentation at Unseen.
