Het Witte Wieven Archief (2025)

Het Witte Wieven Archief (2023-ongoing) is a growing collection of stories, places, and traces tied to the Witte Wieven: ghost-like women from Dutch folklore said to dwell in hills, swamps, and forests. Once seen as powerful and different- midwives, herbalists, wise women- their knowledge was forgotten, their names erased. Over time, they returned as legend, as mist, as a memory of what once was.

This project began as a scavenger hunt- a way to return to the magic I believed in as a child. My grandparents told me stories of trolls, fairies, and ghosts from around the world- and they believed in them too. Later, I passed those stories on to my siblings, showing them the “evidence.” I wanted to see it for myself, to find these places to escape to. As I started to visit them over the years, they not only became an escape, but they taught me about Dutch nature, the history of my country, it’s women and the power of storytelling.

I move between belief and doubt, between the urge to prove and the need to preserve mystery. The Witte Wieven still resist explanation. Their presence lingers in stones, trees, water, and soil: quiet witnesses of all that has passed.

Het Witte Wieven Archief is a continuation of the project the search for The Invisible Women (2023). The 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 .

This project is funded by Amarte fonds & Rotterdam Photo