Most people are now back from vacation. Back from that hellishly hot, burning, storm-ravaged, flooded, hailed, terrifying foreign country. Even in Scandinavia – sweet, friendly, permanently smelling of cinnamon buns – people were not safe; there storm Hans came ashore to wreak havoc.
Anyone who dared to take a look at the news in recent weeks, only came to one conclusion: you had better be in your own country this summer. So nice and green, so nice and straight, so well-arranged and quiet too, now that the neighbors and their noise are slowly melting on a southern European beach.
Good. Especially for those who like to view the world through cliché glasses, the image editors of the ANP news agency have put together a photo folder on the website. The folder is called ‘Netherlands holiday country’. This way the people who were away can see how nice it was here. And the people who stayed see their own look confirmed.
Because holidays in the Netherlands – everyone knows that – are very cozy and idyllic. ‘In all provinces of the country’, wrote the ANP, ‘we map out what the Dutch do during the summer holidays.’ Let’s have a look, oh yes I can already see it. In Overijssel you could walk through a corn maze this summer, in Zeeland you could kitesurf, in North Brabant you could hug pigs, in North Holland everyone sailed half naked on a boat and in Groningen people walked the Pieterpad. And in case someone forgot: the Netherlands is a cycling country, there are many beautiful cycling paths here on which you can make cycling trips by bicycle.
For the record, there is nothing wrong with these activities. The Netherlands is beautiful in the summer, so walk that barefoot path, go to the heath, hug that pig. But that folder. The selection. They could have thought about that a little longer at ANP. Two things.
A. The photos in it now are exactly the photos you expect from this subject, not the photos you hope for. You can describe them without having to see them, those pictures of spry cyclists, sunny walkers, good-natured water sports enthusiasts. Those are exclamation marks instead of question marks, to quote Fred Ritchin, image editor of The New York Times Magazine around 1980, so to speak. Confirmations instead of surprises, and also redeemable. The only photo that you could possibly see that it was taken in the wet summer of 2023 is that of a man on a campsite in Eersel, who – laughing, of course – sweeps rainwater out of his tent with a broom.
Two. Very strange, but on the basis of this photo selection one could just get the outdated idea that the Netherlands consists of only white people as a holiday destination. That, at least during the summer months, there are simply no non-white Dutch people. Or that non-white Dutch people do nothing during the holidays that are worth photographing, because their activities may not be recognizable enough for those who like to see the Netherlands as a very cozy and idyllic holiday destination. Or that the ANP’s image editors temporarily had blinders on.
Be that as it may, this is the conclusion: ‘The Netherlands as a holiday country’ is an illusion. And that is a bit of a shame in 2023. But there is hope. This is a sentence from the short introductory text of the photo folder: ‘In this overview, which is regularly supplemented, we highlight some of these holiday activities.’ (Italics mine.) The holidays are over. Working!