Introduction

The jury of the Steenbergen Stipendium visited the final exam exhibitions of various art academies in the Netherlands to select five (photo) projects. This year's jury consists of Sterre Sprengers (Chair of the Steenbergen Stipendium and image editor at De Correspondent), Jaap Scheeren (photographer and honorable mention of the Steenbergen Stipendium 2003), and Caroline von Courten (PhD candidate in photo theory, Leiden University).

Lou Muuse (Willem de Kooning)

Retour Afzender
An online production about asylum policy in the Netherlands. On a website, the entire journey of an asylum seeker in our country is explained step by step using text and visuals (photography, drawings, infographics). As you scroll down, you go through all the steps, while navigating left and right provides more information about each component. The website is kept up-to-date but is also a work in progress. If there are changes in the policy, they can also be incorporated into this project. Lou Muuse's goal is to make a highly complex system understandable. During the graduation exhibition at Willem de Kooning, she showcased the website on a large computer screen. This allowed visitors to navigate through the website at their own pace.

Yara van der Velden (KABK)

Projections – a photographic research into a country and its buried treasures

Mongolia was named in 2014 by the International Monetary Union as the fastest-growing economy in the world due to the scarce resources hidden in the ground. What effect does this have on the country, landscape, and lives of the less than three million residents? What are their dreams, what is reality, and how does this relate to our world?
Yara has created a publication in which she explored this theme in different photographic ways. The publication is supported by text and explanation. In addition, she built an installation of a green screen landscape that shows the scarce resources and simultaneously, when entering the installation, the visitor sees themselves placed in a virtual Mongolian landscape on a screen. The installation (estimated 4 x 6 meters and 3 meters high) is of a green screen landscape with pillars on which the scarce resources are located. The publication is on a pedestal, and on the ground is the screen where the visitor sees themselves walking in a virtual landscape.

Amber Toorop (KABK)

G’lijk weleer, mijn lieve schat
A study of Indians who migrated to the Netherlands at the end of the Dutch East Indies, based on stories from her own family. The first generation is growing old, and valuable stories are fading away. Amber seeks the sense of home, which is so characteristic of the Indo generation in the Netherlands. The younger generation is curious about the memories of the first generation, colored by longing and nostalgia. Her project consists of a publication in which she brings together old photos, portraits of family members, interior photos, reproductions of cookbooks, and black-and-white prints of typical Indonesian indoor plants in the Netherlands. Additionally, she presents cliché drawings of nostalgically Indonesian landscapes on a screen, with audio featuring older Indonesians recounting their memories of the country. Amber also showcases a display case containing historical material from her family's origins in Indonesia.

Esther Hovers (KABK)

False Positives
A pseudo-scientific investigation into street security cameras and the analysis of "abnormal" behavior by experts. Nowadays, all deviant behavior on the street is classified as "suspicious." But what constitutes normalcy? Will surveillance cameras provide us with the safety we yearn for? Esther presented her project with a variety of visual elements she had collected and created, displayed on the wall. Additionally, she showcased a short film from a security camera, with a professional providing a voice-over explanation of how he analyzes the images. Esther has also crafted a publication where she skillfully merged her findings and personal photos into a compelling design.

Majda Vidakovic (KABK)

Did You Mean: Anything Else
Everything on the internet is found through search engines. Majda is reshaping this phenomenon of search engines and the influence it has on our perspective of the virtual world and the tangible reality of the objects that are the subjects of our search and discovery actions. What do we perceive when we look at a digital image of an object, and how does this differ from the actual object? Form takes on a different function and meaning, thus altering our experience as well. The project consists of various separate components that come together to form a comprehensive installation. An installation of a wooden window that physically manifests the Google Image search engine. Distorted cacti serve as three-dimensional translations of the virtual search results. Also, a performance is part of the installation, a physical search conducted by four participants. The performance is recorded and visible on a screen. On another screen, you can witness Majda building an installation photo with a cactus. Additionally, there is a publication featuring other images from this research.