Lisanne Hoogerwerf creates landscapes as a reflection of her inner experience. She takes us to a special world where imagination becomes reality, or vice versa. In her new photo series ‘Fragments of Common Ground’ she takes refuge in a wide panorama.
In an endless watery environment, reflecting the sky, with islands on which archetypal, colourful buildings stand, Hoogerwerf shows that everything may be peaceful. Well-kept islands seem to float in an ocean between heaven and earth against a hazy horizon. They appear as independent units, each self-powered. You can think of a sustainable future here; or of a safe playground for children -on a green island further on. Is all that a dream or after the deluge? After all, aren’t those distant skies threatening, the trees without leaves, houses without inhabitants, and the waters still as after the storm? You imagine yourself between a lovely scene and a cinematic drama, the play of which has yet to begin. This uncertainty remains fascinating.
Lisanne Hoogerwerf (1987) graduated 2011 from the KABK in The Hague as a painter, but after a while she found photography more suitable to express herself in. After some working years as a photographer and filmmaker of social projects, she started free work as an artist in 2019. The urge to do something with her ever-emerging inner images was strong. Her work reflects the dissociated relationships between man, nature and culture. The images are often recognizable from a harrowing reality: desolate huts, oppressive landscapes or strange scenes in which people are absent. Without making reality explicit, Hoogerwerf confronts us as viewers with the state of the world in which cohesion, cooperation and society at the very least seem disrupted.