A Ukrainian flag has been flying on a vacant lot in Duivendrecht, Amsterdam, for a few days now. Nothing special, you might say, the blue-yellow can be seen in more places in these days of war and why not here, on this trivial tuber country between two houses and with a view of the noise barrier of the A10? Protest is protest, support is support. Yet this flag is special in this place. So special that the ANP news agency sent a photographer to Duivendrecht to capture him.
‘Of course you hope for people to come and have a look, maybe smoke a butt and talk to each other. A kind of neighborhood complaint – that’s what I was looking for.’ Remko de Waal (32), who has worked for ANP since 2014, actually had to go to The Hague to photograph the weekly question hour. This assignment came in between, he had only a short time to delve into his subject. ‘Very special’, he says about it. ‘Such a stupid piece of land that is suddenly connected to what is happening in the world right now.’
The stupid piece of land is owned by Vladimir Putin’s Dutch son-in-law. According to business magazine Quote Jorrit Faassen, married to Putin’s daughter Maria, bought the ‘unsightly piece of building land’ for 4.5 tons three years ago. He wants to build business premises there. On the website Weekly magazine for Ouder-Amstel informs the municipality of Ouder-Amstel that an environmental permit has now been issued for some of those plans. Talks about realizing housing have been suspended by the municipality ‘in view of the war in Ukraine and Mr Faassen’s close ties with Russian President Putin’.
Petition to Putin’s daughter
So this Duivendrecht weed country is not that trivial. It is guilty ground in which a territorial flag was planted, as if it were recaptured from the enemy. It is not visible in this photo, but activists also attached a sign with a letter to the fence along the site. A letter to Maria Putin, in English and clearly legible from the sidewalk.
Less than 2,000 kilometers from your peaceful piece of free land, your father is destroying a completely free country and its people. “Try to change your father’s mind, we beg you, Maria.” On the grass under the flag are candles in the shape of a heart.
No one came by during the half hour that De Waal was photographing there. He tried to make the most of the bright backlight. He photographed the flag, the letter and the undeveloped lawn from as many points of view as possible: up close, from afar, through the bars of the fence, against that grandiose blue sky, with the solar panels on the orange roof of the white neighboring house in the background. .
Bars are not bars
Symbolic or political messages that his photos could convey are the responsibility of the viewer, says the photographer. The bars are not bars, no reference to submission or anything, just like the solar panels are no reference to alternative forms of energy. At least not in his eyes.
‘I just wanted to translate people’s amazement about this terrain into my photos. That you see how silly it looks and at the same time realize: even in this unexpected place in the Netherlands, such a large, international event is suddenly visible.’
After that, De Waal got back into his car and went on to the question time in The Hague. ‘ANP photographers are always in a hurry,’ he says. They often photograph three or four subjects in a day. But that flag made an impression. Perhaps he will return to Duivendrecht later on. “When the candles burn.”