Het Witte Wieven Archief (2025)

The Witte Wieven Archive is a growing collection of the reframed stories, images, and traces of the Dutch landscape where the legends of the Witte Wieven once lived. These ghostly figures—once seen as wise women—are fading, just like the forests, swamps, and burial sites that held their stories. As the land changes, so does its memory.

This archive seeks to capture what remains before it is lost, revisualising the stories of the Witte Wieven we know through texts and visuals created over centuries by men. Inspired by the history of photography - spirit photography—where photographs served as fragile mementos of what once was—I document the landscapes, collect physical natural traces, and reassemble fragments of forgotten folklore. Through photography, storytelling, and site-specific walks, I explore the tension between memory and disappearance, between what we see and what is slipping away, and discuss the grey areas of ‘truth’ within storytelling and photography.

The project is a continuation of the project the search for The Invisible Women (2023). This Archive will serve as a tool for the public to visit the Witte Wieven. It is both a tribute to the unseen spirits of these myths and a quiet warning for the Netherlands and her way of story conservation: soon, we may only remember them through photographs and scattered words, no longer through the landscapes they haunted.

This project is funded by Amarte fonds & Rotterdam Photo