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Carolina van Mol from Eindhoven was on Wednesday at the exact spot where her sister Anja was photographed 56 years ago at the Evoluon, which was still under construction at the time. That is the result of a search by Koert van Mensvoort, who has set up a new exhibition in the iconic building. Koert was fascinated by a girl in a black and white photo from 1966. He went looking for her, but she turned out to be dead. That’s why sister Carolina took her place.
The search for the girl in the old photo was actually not too bad, says Koert. Partly thanks to the attention of Omroep Brabant, he quickly tracked down her sister. Anja died of cervical cancer in 2020 at the age of 60. “It is very sad that she is no longer alive, but I am very grateful that her sister is here today.”
“We often cycled past the Evoluon and called it the mushroom.”
Carolina was at work when she got all kinds of texts from acquaintances. “I thought something had happened.” But then it turned out to be her sister’s photo, which people recognized.”
She had never been to the Evoluon herself: “We often cycled past it and called it the mushroom,” she says.
Her father was the well-known Eindhoven amateur photographer Gerardus van Mol. “My sister and I often had to pose for him. Anja didn’t always like that. So I think her look in that picture is actually a bit bored,” says Carolina. In the old photo, a man can also be seen in the distance. That is Carolina’s grandfather, who helped build the Evoluon.
At the end of the eighties, the Evoluon closed to the general public, but it has recently reopened. On Wednesday, Koert van Mensvoort received Carolina and her husband Stefan as guests of honor in the same room where Prince Bernhard was received at the opening of the building.
“Great to experience.”
Koert showed Carolina and her husband around the new exhibition RetroFuture, which shows how people used to look at the future. Before the tour started, Carolina was allowed to pose at the spot where her sister had her picture taken. A special moment for Carolina.
During the tour, Carolina is visibly impressed by the exhibition. The highlight is the part in which she makes a journey through time in a kind of time machine, with special glasses and hanging in a kind of merry-go-round. “Great to experience,” she says afterwards. And so Carolina finally saw that ‘mushroom’ inside.
