PERSPECTIVES

This artwork was unveiled by Job Cohen, Mayor of Amsterdam, on Friday 19 November, 2004, on the occasion of the official opening of the St Lucas Andreas Hospital (SLAZ) in Amsterdam.

The underlying structure for this work is provided by a map of the area in Amsterdam West around the St Lucas Andreas Hospital. Howland carefully erased the background from the map, while leaving all the lines and markings intact. Into this she digitally inserted cut-out aerial photographs of the same area to form a delicate and complex montage of cartographic and photographic details. Running down the centre of the work is the map’s representation of the A10 Ring motorway, which divides early 20th-century, pre-war expansions of the city inside the Ring from postwar developments outside the Ring.

Although the photographic elements correlate with their locations in the map, the viewpoints they present allow viewers to read the images in different ways. From a distance you can identify the structural organisation of this part of the city, while closer examination allows you to explore unusual angles of recognisable places or become absorbed by intricate details.

SLAZ was formed by the merger of St Lucas Hospital, at this location, and Andreas Hospital, which was demolished soon after the photographs for this work were made. Perspectives was commissioned by SLAZ to mark this moment in the hospitals’ histories.