My dear mother (82), Museum Langen Fondation, Neuss, Germany, 2023.

None of us know how much time we have but, interestingly, time is relative, depending on its observer rather than an immutably fixed constant everywhere in the universe. Our perception of time is especially influenced by our own perspective: Are we living in the moment or looking backward on time? It’s also influenced by our memory of past experiences. As we get older the rate at which we process experiences slows down and thus time seems to “speed up”. The many and often new things young children have to do in a day contribute to their notion that time is more plentiful. Therefore, when looking back, time may feel slower. This can apply to adults, too. When we look back on a time period that was filled with lots of new and exciting things we see a large expense of events and memories. They make it seem like time stretches out. Looking back on fewer moments that have past, the less rich your own representation is, the more it’s going to seem like time went by quickly. Thus, how we process what we experience and see influences how we view time. Not introducing new patterns into your life, can make you feel like time is going by much quicker overall.

The whole concept of “time being of value” only has meaning for living, breathing, thinking and feeling beings. Afterall, a universe with nothing living in it would have nothing of value in it because there would be nothing to appreciate that value itself. Hence, life is the sufficient and necessary condition for anything of value. I think the trick is to make life an adventure - be it in your imagination, in real life or both - not tedious and unimaginative.

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Rijnstraat 50 (Rhinestreet), opposite of Central Station The Hague, The Netherlands, 2024

Never underestimate the power of the ordinary, for it is the very foundation upon which the extraordinary is built. It is the stepping stone that carries us upwards, the canvas upon which we can paint our unique stories. The most profound joys in live can often be found in the simplest of moments. Embracing the beauty of the ordinary enables one to pause, breathe and appreciate the intricate details that often go unnoticed. Legacies are not limited to the realms of the extraordinary but are determined by the ordinary. It is in the familiarity and the simplicity of everyday moments where the beauty of ordinariness lies.

Although many like to interpret YOLO — you only live once — as an invitation to be careless and wasteful, I like to take it into the direction of existentialism: knowing that life has no meaning, what do we do with it? Once we accept the absurdity of life — that it has no predetermined meaning whatsoever — we are free to enjoy the little pleasures, joys and observations of daily life and give them our own meaning. Embracing the ordinary is living live to the fullest. Meaning reveals itself in the most insignificant moments, in the beauty of everyday life.

While waiting for tram 17 at one of the platforms of The Hague Central Station my eyes where met with this everyday scene right across the street, a seemingly insignificant play of light created by the evening sun projecting its last rays of the day through an empty government office building.

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Stone effigy of Aliénor of Aquitaine, Royal Abbey of Fontevraud, France, 1997.

Back in 1997 I recorded this 36mm high quality diapositive (transparency) with my analog Minolta 3000i SLR camera depicting Aliénor of Aquitaine. She was the only woman to be crowned queen of both England and France and spent her last years at the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud in the Plantagenet heartland of Anjou. Married first to Louis VII of France and then Henry II of England, Aliénor – Eleanor to the English – died here in 1204 at the remarkable age of 82. More than 800 years later, her painted stone effigy rests in the cavernous nave of the abbey church, exactly as she wanted. In her final years, this educated and feisty lady commissioned her own stone effigy, painted in the bright colours of her royal robes, as well as effigies of her estranged husband Henry and her favourite son, Richard the Lionheart, both of whom had pre-deceased her.
A learned woman who spoke four languages, Eleanor decreed not only that she should be portrayed with an open book, but also that her recumbent likeness be higher than that of her late husband. Henry had imprisoned Eleanor when she took their sons’ side against him, but Eleanor knew how to make a statement.

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My dear wife Loes walking underneath a railroad bridge, Passage du Sablon, Metz, France, 2019.

Railroad bridges are usually made of either stone, concrete, steel or timber. Nearly all of the North American, South American and Asian railroad bridges were built of either steel or timber. In Europe, Russia and parts of China, timber was almost never used but concrete and stone were quite prevalent. The simple arch bridge not only is the most beautiful and spectacular of all railroad bridge types but it is also the most perfect form for handling the heavy load of a train since the materials in the bridge are always in compression. Arches are shaped into some form of either a semicircle or a segmental. If the arch is made of steel, hinges are often located at the two springing points to relieve temperature related expansion and contraction stresses.

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My wife Loes in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium, 2024.

It is said that the mirror is the symbol of imagery or of awareness. The mirror has the ability to copy the visible reflections of the world in its own figural reality. Scheler and other philosophers associated mirrors with thought because it is a mental instrument that is the reflection of the universe and enables you to observe yourself. Frequently mirrors emerge in legends and fairytales, showing what happened in the past or what will happen in the future or what is happening now from a very far distance.
The mirror always tells the truth. Without need for the masks we people wear to protect ourselves, mirrors reflect only what they see. In a way mirrors are able to perceive the soul of ourselves, as well as of the people and things surrounding us, as they are without cover. This is partially due to the fact that what we see when we look into the mirror is actually not reality. Rather, the reflection in the mirror is an inverted version of the world we live in. Or is it the other way around?

#modernarchitecture #colourphotography #colorphotography #perspective #onefocalpoint #mirrorreflection #museumoffineartsantwerp #building #buildings #newphotographers #instatravel #buildingphotography #streetphotography #urbanphotography #urbanex #architectlovers #architectlovers #arthistory #philosophical #modernart #visitantwerp #realityisanillusion #mirrorreflection #corridor #peopleinarchitecture #reflectionofyou #realityshifting #upsidedown #contemporaryarchitecture