(s. guraziu – sky division, august 2023)
Jimmy Nelson (a well known British-Dutch artist), as a photographer has traveled the world for decades to capture the beauty of Indigenous people and to amaze the public with his monumental photo-books “Before They Pass Away” and “Homage to Humanity”. But due to Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020 traveling became almost impossible. Unable to freely wander around the world, he was “forced to change somewhat the focus, his camera was focused locally”. Soon he began to “discover” traditional Dutch costumes and realized how beautiful they are. Not only beautiful, but just as unique as those of the Papuans or Maasai he had marveled at before. So he used this “unfortunate lockdown as an excuse” to artistically capture the Beauty of Netherlands.
I “dare” to say that no one before has captured the beauty of Dutch costumes as he did. In his book “Between the Sea and the Sky” (September 2022) he depicts 20 communities in traditional dress – from Axel in the southwest to Hindeloopen in the northeast. It’s a Big book literally, and at the same time a Great photo-book, truly an ode to the Netherlands. And, of course, in accordance with his artistic spectrum, an ode to the Humanity in general.
In addition to the voluminous book “Between the Sea and the Sky” (528 pages) was organized also the accompanying photo-exhibition. A year later some of his photo-portraits were crowned by the stamp issue called “Jimmy Nelson – Ode to the Netherlands” (this was done by PostNL). The stamps came out 25 January 2023, they are 20 different stamps which feature photographed portraits of women in their traditional costumes.
Note:
this is an unofficial video, it has nothing to “do” with Jimmy Nelson, nothing “officially” – as an admirer of his work, this compilation is just a kind of gratitude, it’s not an “infringement of copyrights” or something… hope he’d smile, just as I do (ie. while studying his captivation of the Maasai smiles, or perhaps those of Gauchos in Argentina, or what about the smiles of Nenets in Siberia, or the ones of Himbas in Namibia etc etc : )
