The Imaginary Friend is based on a performance by artist Anne Mieke Backer from 1980 that took place against the panoramic backdrop of the Maas bridges in Rotterdam, before the railway tunnel was put into use. The lonely figure 'Von Tuzzi' (fantasy) is central here.
As a resident of the bridge keeper's tower in the Wijnhaven, he was only visible to train passengers, who could only watch him for seven seconds as they passed. That was too short a time to know exactly what they had seen.
In the 1980s, photographer and writer Pieter van Oudheusden (1957-2013) recorded the appearance and disappearance of this enigmatic resident of the Wijnhaven Tower in hundreds of Polaroids.
Anne Mieke Backer edited and enlarged these Polaroids to retell the story in a sublime way. Some of these are shown at Art Rotterdam, accompanied by two publications, a photo book and a literary essay.