Coastline

2018-2021 (in progress)

The skyline, the horizon is central to Anne-Meike van Willegen’s Coastline series. On quiet days, the sea seems to be performing a choreography. Slowly rolling waves, illuminated by the setting sun, light and subdued. At other times the water is close, fierce and threatening. Waves are beating the seawall. Vastness is a recurrent theme. Occasionally, someone else is present but most of the time the places are abandoned and you are alone.

The photos show the same places, but the landscape is different with each visit, due to the weather and the season. The clouds passing by and the light that puts different elements on a pedestal. The waves of the sea create waves on the beach. Sometimes, these changes occur quickly, at other times nothing seems to change. Slow, never the same. The dunes are changing in shape too. Vegetation grows, dies and grows again. 

The earth beneath our feet is immense. Its skin changes over and over again. Through human intervention, through natural elements. The horizon has been consistently put in the middle of the photos, continuing from one photo to another, as it were. Placed side by side, infinity is becoming even more visible. We are standing on the edge where earth and water meet, and are confronted with the proportions. The earth large and infinite, man small and finite. Facing our own mortality, the skyline photographed over and over again. Only the sea and the sky, the coast. Two surfaces touching each other and affecting each other. Always.