Reflections of Leiden’s Singelpark

Liquid light

In 2003, I took a picture of my daughter swimming under water. I was struck by the captivating new colours and shapes. Under the water, I saw the body shapes distort, deform, merge, and become one with the water. I saw the blue of the sky and the green of the environment reflect in the water and paint the bodies. Since then, I have been intrigued by movements, colours, and shapes in water.

A project in 2007, in which I captured the reflection of Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden with my camera every day for a year, led me to become fascinated and inspired by reflections in water and the many variations in colours and shapes that can be seen in it and also by what all this water in Leiden adds to the city. It makes the city lighter and more fluid by the reflecting light. The presence of water in a city adds an extra dimension to the environment. The realism of everyday reality contrasts with the poetry of reflections, which seem to point out another, unknown and lovelier world.

Walking through the Singelpark -Jeroen Mater’s fantastic initiative, developed by a large group of volunteers- I was again inspired by what I saw in the water and decided to capture the entire Singelpark in Leiden in reflections. Again, this produced exciting and attractive images. I often turn the photos around so that the viewer wonders: What am I looking at? Where is this? When you look at your surroundings from a normal perspective, you see an overly familiar world that you no longer consciously perceive. If you look at reality from the perspective of reflections, you look with a new fresh perspective.

I have now published a photo book with a selection of the photos of reflections I took in the last 4 years. It came about because the idea was immediately received very enthusiastically by publisher De Muze. I was also very pleasantly surprised that 40 Leiden residents who have a connection to the Singelpark were willing to reflect on their personal experience of the park in a poem or text. These different perspectives are a beautiful complement to the photos. 

I feel privileged to now witness a volte-face, a turnaround in thinking about the urban environment. Several writers, in their contributions to the book, express their desire for a green oasis that will deliver us from the stony desert that the city had become in the 1960s. The emphasis now is on creating an environment which is a paradise of green. It is wonderful to see the city’s increasing transformation from car park to urban landscape.

The Singelpark is a major contributor to this. With my photographs of reflections, I want to emphasise the landscape that is already present on the Singelpark route: a city reflected in liquid light.

Marlies van Boekel