What's (in) the Picture?

The theme for this week’s Lens-artists Photo Challenge #178 is You Choose. The only thing I chose for this blog was the subject and the photo. The choice to build this canal was made long ago, and one of the spin offs is Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.

Before the pandemic I used to cross this canal twice a day, and I took loads of photos of it, but just recently I found out about its history and historical purpose.

As most of you probably know the Dutch have a long relationship with water, and learned how water could be managed over the ages. About half of The Netherlands is below sea level; the question was and is how to keep it dry? Some say that God created the world but the Dutch created The Netherlands. In reality we manage water. In days of climate change that gets more complex. Not only the amount of water coming in by rivers and rain is growing, the soil of The Netherlands sinks as well.

In 1840 this canal was build. From 1848 the former lake the Haarlemmermeer was turned into the Haarlemmermeerpolder and this canal was used to dump the water of that lake into the North Sea. Schiphol (ship hell) was a spot in that former lake notorious for ship wrecks as the story goes.

Nowadays the canal takes out the water from the West of The Netherlands to the sea at Katwijk.

• Archive Oegstgeest
• Archive Oegstgeester Kanaal

Shot with iPhone 11 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta Click the picture for a larger version