How did I get the idea to fly?
Highlights in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam is a rapidly changing city. In search of an overview I have seen quite a few roofs of Amsterdam. Working as photographer at Ruimte & Duurzaamheid, planning department of the municipality of Amsterdam from 1992. My work was very versatile and important material for zoning plans and project decisions. Studio work (portraits and scale models) to photographically following large projects. Photographing the construction Piet Hein tunnel elements in Belgium is one example.
Mirande Phernambucq on a roof in the Haarlemmerstraat, Amsterdam. Photo: Leon de Laat.
In the dark room I enlarged fascinating old aerial photographs from sheet film negatives. Black and white photos. My wish grew to photograph the city of Amsterdam from this special perspective. A bird’s-eye perspective with the help of a small airplane.
My first aerial photo assignment (1997) was photographing a piece of water in the lake IJsselmeer. These photographs were used as a foundation for a huge model of the house construction project IJburg.
In the book “Amsterdam the Great Projects” my (aerial) photographs of Nieuw Sloten, the construction of the Eastern Docklands and IJburg are published.
Flying above the city opened my heart. In 2001 I started my own company so I was no longer bound to assignments above Amsterdam. Our country full of wetlands is breathtaking from the air. The landscape shows the same lines and structures from a great height as we might encounter under a microscope. It fascinates me. In conversation with the landscape below me I make photos that people like to see hanging on their walls.
Mirande Phernambucq.
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