Waterkering

Posted by Pawn (Den Haag, Netherlands) on 13 November 2009 in Lifestyle & Culture.

Today is Friday the 13th...
Holland is a country below sea level, guarded only by dunes and dykes. Quite an unsane concept of living, but it already holds for centuries. Nevertheless water has to go in and out, as well as ships. Rotterdam is still Europe's largest industrial harbour.
Dutch engineers are very smart when it comes to water. Here you see a little part (an 'elbow') of the Waterkering in the Nieuwe Waterweg, a 360 meters wide channel that gives entrance from sea to Rotterdam. With extremely bad weather de Waterkering closes of the channel from the sea with 22 meters high doors. The whole construction has cost a billion dollars. But we feel save now!
In the right top of the image you see a ship that seems to sail on a more than 15 meters higher level, in a corresponding channel. No illusion, but part of everyday's insanity in Hollands coastal scenery.

Photography has done at least as much to deaden conscience as to arouse it.
- Susan Sontag, in 'On Photography' (1977)

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