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According to Lou-Lou van Staaveren (1990), photography and gardening are closely related. Both gardener and photographer observe the landscape, as well as intervene: one using a shovel and pruning shears, the other with a camera. In both cases, there is an attempt to exercise control over the world to a certain degree. Van Staaveren does both. Growing up in a family of growers in flower capital Aalsmeer, she was born with green fingers. She graduated in 2021 from art academy with the ongoing photography project Pleasant Place. This title is also used for a series of publications that she founded with two others. It refers to a concept rooted in literature: Locus Amoenus, an idealized refuge, inspired by the Garden of Eden. Van Staaveren is cultivating a green paradise of her own. Her photographs combined make up a fictional portrait of her ideal garden. Fictional, as in reality the portrayed greenery originates from various gardens: from Monet’s idyllic garden in Giverny to her family’s garden in Aalsmeer, which functions as an important experimental garden.
The artist is not concerned with specific plants, but rather with the romantic idea of the garden as a landscape of the mind, a place of imagination. The shapes of the frames contribute to this idea, with the works at Prospects referring to the geometric designs of castle gardens like the French Château de Chenonceau. This is how the artist constructs a new photographic reality.
Text: Esmee Postma
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)