Antwerp-based photographer Marie Dreezen explores “forgotten places” in Belgium, documenting empty beaches, abandoned vacation destinations and tourist hotspots made empty by nightfall. The lens-based artist manipulates these scenes with light and colour, to build locations that feel strange yet familiar. It’s a process that treads the line between fiction and the real world.
(Un)familiar Sands (2022) focuses on the Belgian west coast, between the Yser river and French border. It’s a popular resort in the summer months, but becomes quiet and still once the weather cools. The series is filled with a sense of solitude, documenting abandoned holiday homes in isolated landscapes.
“This is a place where people try to flee everyday life only for a couple months a year, but most of the time it is nearly deserted, home to those who cater to the flood of people,” Dreezen says. “I kept getting pulled back to that place. After my family bought a studio there, I was able to enjoy the tranquility of the touristic off-season and started to create my own reality.”
The 2021 series The Bluest of Days was made in a short period of isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. The images, drenched in blue, echo the loneliness felt by countless people during government-mandated lockdowns. There is an eerie feeling to the pictures, as rolling sand dunes and sweeping beaches, places so often overrun with people, appear untouched by humans.
All images courtesy of Marie Dreezen.
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