The title “Aan de IJssel” refers actually to two towns, Krimpen aan den IJssel and Capelle aan den IJssel that I spent my childhood and teenage years in. Coincidentally both won the title of ‘greenest city in the Netherlands’ two years after one another. I was very surprised by this, as the green or nature always felt quite managed or surpressed, like in much of the Netherlands, once out of necessity, later by design. For the project I wandered around the places I grew up, seeing how nature is sculpted, imitated, subdued, but also sometimes nurtured. The photographs are brought together in a hand-bound photo book accompanying my thesis on the interaction between man and nature.