What if you are unemployed, and the only way to earn money is through hard physical labour – under strict supervision, with no real choice?

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Between 1920 and 1955, the unemployed in The Netherlands were put to work through state labour schemes: digging, hauling, obeying. It was not the work itself that mattered, but the people who were to be shaped and made ‘useful’. Machines were switched off so that forests, canals, sports fields and viewing hills could be built by hand.

 

Bloedberg (Blood Mountain) traces the remnants of those workers, long after they have gone. Is the past still present in these places, even when it is no longer visible?

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In November 2025, Bloedberg was exhibited at Editie West, a group show with photo collective Studio 307. 

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