I am a visual artist based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I make photographs, books and installations. Writing and text usually play an important role in my work.
Beside my own projects, I work as a freelance curator, educator, producer and organiser in the fields of photography, architecture, design and the visual arts. You can find more about that on my on LinkedIn page.

I am fascinated by the contemporary urban landscape, how we as humans use and make public space. Also the natural but most often designed landscapes (often in urban situations) interest me. How do we perceive and value our surroundings? How is that again reflected in our visual culture, tourism, architecture and urbanism? Those are the questions my work is driven by.
I regard both image and text to be part of a common language, that tries to describe the spaces that we inhabit: I photograph and I write. Also the history of a specific place plays an important role and forms the underlay in most of my projects, research plays an important role therefore.
Usually I work on self-initiated longterm projects but also on commissions or specific assignments.

My books Phantom City and Niemandsland can be ordered/bought at NAi Booksellers or through my web shop. On Instagram you can find the project ‘The Nature of Time’ that I started in 2019, for which I photograph one specific location close to my home on (now irregular) intervals. You can contact me by email through kimbouvy at gmail dot com if you want to know more or would like to collaborate.

All images: copyright Kim Bouvy c/o Pictoright, Amsterdam

Since 1 February 2019, I started to document this unspectacular location weekly, usually on Monday at 8:35h. Time passes, seasons come an go. The landscape changes, sometimes in small steps, but sometimes in unexpected waves. Every week, I post an image on my Instagram account

For a possible commission, I photographed the NDSM area that lies north of the IJ in Amsterdam in 2017. I did not get the commission unfortunately, but the images show the character of ‘in betweenness’ that will make it interesting to look at this specific slice in time from the future again.

“When looking at these landscapes that have emerged here since industrial times, their character does not reveal itself lightly, I find. These massive spaces occupied by industrial complexes, often hidden inside enormous square boxes of steel and stone, are fenced off with a myriad of infrastructures made out of pipes, roads and private corridors. They do not seem willing to communicate their function, their origin nor their intentions for the future.
The history of industry is usually not recorded or well-kept and therefore difficult to research. Architecture guides rarely include this functional architecture due to the generic and unashamed uglyness of its design language. Maps record these spaces as grey areas, without any street names or numbers. Their streets are hard to navigate, signs are often missing. These are places that intentionally wish to remain invisible it seems.
It is this invisibility that I tried to grasp and portray, to not turn a blind eye, but to try to take a closer look at what is out there, in the present.” (KB, text excerpt installation Made in Europe)

In the context of RECIPROCITY design liège 2015, Bureau Europa commissioned me to research the specific reciprocity between the (post-)industrial identities of Liège and Maastricht.
The exhibition, installed in the library of Bureau Europa, showed a selection of my photos that I combined with historical material and a digital slide installation with my images and texts taken between April and September 2015 in the area between Liège and Maastricht, following the river Meuse.

I invited designer Hannah Hiecke to make a satellite map of the same area that is presented as an inkjet print on a size of 4 by 2 meters. In conjunction, a leporello designed by Hiecke presented the map together with 10 images and texts by me that give insight into the context and specific local history of the depicted locations. The poster can be downloaded here

Images from the slideshow

About MADE IN EUROPE
Both cities, as part of the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion, are of considerable importance to the footnotes of European history: in 1817, the Dutch King, William 1st, sold the Prince-Bishop of Liège’s summer castle in Seraing to the sons of William Cockerill, an English industrial entrepreneur and skilled engineer. They then laid the foundations for the first coke blast furnace in Belgium in 1823, thus introducing the mass-production of iron and steel and sparking the Industrial Revolution on the European continent. These events were paralleled in Maastricht by Petrus Regout, who started his family-run steam-powered glassworks in the Boschstraat in 1834 that would extend rapidly into factories for glass, earthenware, nails and rifles. Both families consisted of pioneering industrialists and capitalists, both consolidating cross-border relations for the sake of their businesses.

Bouvy’s photographic ‘travelogue’ takes the river Meuse as her guide, looking at the successive landscapes that have emerged along the riverbanks from the time of the industrial revolution to the present. Starting at the Cockerill Castle in Seraing, where the now redundant furnaces owned by Indian steel giant ArcelorMittal stand silently next to worker communities, a new masterplan is being implemented. Between Herstal and Visé one can find off-highway shopping malls, waste incinerators and logistic hubs in development, followed by the picturesque landscape of the Plateau of Caestert and the ENCI limestone quarry and nature reserve in Maastricht. The route ends at Bureau Europa, a villa in the ‘Timber factory’ that was once part of the Sphinx empire of Regout and Sons and now part of a future ‘Factory of Culture’.

From this sequence of fragmented cross-border industrial and post-industrial landscapes, one can read the struggle of a society in flux, one that needs to constantly adapt to its rapidly changing economic and social conditions. Here the river Meuse acts as a timeless connector of ‘décors’ that are both generic and informed by local histories. The contemporary face of Europe emerges: an area in a state of industrial stagnation and disengagement. The once prominent industrial role of this region has been largely played out through an endless process of mergers. Operating within the international flows of capital, cheap resources, migrant worker populations and global economics, multinational companies no longer limit themselves to the local context of available resources and labour. Under these ‘liquid’ conditions, how can this part of the Meuse-Rhine Euregion – once closely connected by religion, culture and trade – shape, or rather reinvent, its post-industrial identity?

This project is commissioned by Bureau Europa and is part of the extra muros programme of RECIPROCITY design liège, International Triennial of Design & Social Innovation, initiated by The Province of Liege / Culture and OPMA.

For the group exhibition ‘Rotterdam in the Picture’ that showed the way Rotterdam has been photographed since the invention of photography, I made a new digital version in HD of the installation of Phantom City.
The exhibition is accompanied by a magnificent catalogue with the same title.

You can watch the full video here:

Since the invention of the medium of photography, there has never been an exhibition on Rotterdam that has given such a broad representation of the city and of the photography used to produce this representation. Rotterdam in the Picture displays a tough city, a multicultural, constructive and dynamic city, a city that is always under development. The built environment receives great attention, as does the harbour, the striking architecture and the people that make the city what it is.

Either independently or on assignment, photographers from Rotterdam, the Netherlands and abroad have been partly responsible for forming the image of the city. Photographers have developed a vision of the city and given it a countenance. This has helped determine how the city is regarded by external observers, which, in turn, has had an effect upon the way in which Rotterdammers themselves view their city. The image of the city and the city as an image converge here in renowned photographic highlights and unknown material.

Rotterdam in the Picture | 175 Years of Photography in Rotterdam is based on a study that the Nederlands Fotomuseum commissioned Joop de Jong to perform. This exhibition presents many photos from the Museum’s own collection, supplemented by loans from the Rotterdam City Archives, the Royal Archives, the Railway Museum, the Maria Austria Institute, Rotterdam Museum, and the Extraordinary Collections of the University of Leiden.

Photographers in the exhibition
Freek van Arkel, J.Baer, Andor von Barsy, Gabriele Basilico, Henri Berssenbrugge, Henri Alphonse van Besten, Eva Besnyö, W. Bleuzé, A. Boeseken, Boudewijn Bollmann, Marrie Bot, Kim Bouvy, Gaston Braun, George Breitner, Ger Burg, Wouter Cool, John Davies, Cornelis Deltenre, François van Dijk, Adrienne van Eekelen, Bernard F. Eilers, Wally Elenbaas, Franz von Erckens, Gilbert Fastenaekens, Francis Frith, W. Ganter, J. Van Gorkum, Johann Hameter, Robert de Hartogh, Carel van Hees, Walter Herfst, Jacob van der Hoeven, Alphons Hustinx, Andries Jager, Marijn de Jong, Rince de Jong, Henk Jonker, Jan Kamman, Bart Kemps, Gebr. Klumpes, Jan Koelinga, Helena van der Kraan, Carel Kramer, Susanne Kriemann, Germaine Krull, J. Kuiper, W.J. Kuipers, Gustave Larauza, C.A.G. Leyenaar, Jannes Linders, Jan van Maanen, Paul Martens, Peter Martens, Vincent Mentzel, Carl-Emil Mögle, Kees Molkenboer, Munnich & Ermerins, Cornelis Nieuwland, Evert van Ojen, Cas Oorthuys, Pieter Oosterhuis, Julius Perger, Hayo Piebenga, Gebr. Pieterman, Frans von Pöppinghausen, Bas Princen, E. Radermacher, Joop Reijngoud, J. van Rhijn, P.W. Roemer, Jan Roovers, Frits J. Rotgans, Gerco de Ruijter, Daria Scagliola, Eric van der Schalie, Jan Schaper, J. Schotel, Janine Schrijver, Paul Schuitema, Harry Sengers, John Sherrington, Ruud Sies, Otto Snoek, Sara Lydia Stahl-Van Hoboken, Richard Strauss, H.J. Tollens, Robert F. Turing, Uyttenbroek & Versluis, Pieter Vandermeer, Daniël van de Ven, C. Vreedenburgh, Jan Vrijhof, Hans Werlemann, Gerard Wessel, Ed van Wijk, Hans Wilschut, L. van de Winkel, Peter Wotke, Steef Zoetmulder.

Catalogue Rotterdam in the Picture
Autors: Joop de Jonge en Frits Gierstberg
Contributors: Wilfried de Jong en Jules Deelder
Publisher: Hannibal
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9789492081179
Language: Dutch

Within the context of the exhibition ‘Dynamics of Time’ about Cedric Price, ‘PARK / STAD’ (2014) was shown.
The work PARK/STAD (PARK/CITY) examines our presumptions about the often highly constructed ’natural’ landscapes. In the photographic series, presented here as a slideshow projected onto the wall of slowly crossfading lush and idyllic landscapes that can be found in the Parkstad area, an undercurrent of tension exists. In many places, the green ground covers and conceals traces of the mining history that characterises the landscape of Central Limburg.

PARK/STAD is the outcome of the short group residency for the project ‘Verhalen Verbeeld’ in 2013 at the Winselerhof Estate on invitation by Bureau Europa.

As part of my research for ‘Verhalen Verbeeld’, I consulted the Limburg Regional Historical Centre archives and old DSM calendars to gain an insight into what once was, when the earth was still black. This translated into a visual analysis where I zoomed out from the Winselerhof estate in Landgraaf to its immediate vicinity.
Within a 2 km radius only, a range of typologies of constructed landscapes can be found: from an overgrown fishing pond, a botanical garden, to large-scale scenic recreational areas, such as Snow World, Gaia Zoo, Megaland, and the Mondo Verde World Gardens. Parks all seemingly imbued with a particular history, but in terms of meaning and design they appear to completely ignore their industrial past and identity. The remains of what was once a landscape of production are transformed into carriers of a new, generic ‘arcadian’ identity, becoming what could be described as style rooms of the new nature. As such, I put our perceptions about nature under the microscope and show, in a poetic way, the relation and contradiction between constructed, cultivated vegetation and its opaque, underlying cultural identity.

About ‘The Dynamics of Time’: Bureau Europa presents the third iteration of an exhibition of the work of architect Cedric Price and the first public appearance of some of his selected projects in the Netherlands. CEDRIC PRICE: The Dynamics of Time is an exhibition that introduces the work of Price by presenting a cross-section of the elements of his inventive and singular practice: sketches, project drawings, recorded talks, first-hand accounts by staff, colleagues and friends. A series of selected projects present his innovative models for industry, education, government, tourism, ecology and the house.

The exhibition is curated, at the invitation of Bureau Europa, by Jan Nauta and Samantha Hardingham ad is made possible with the support of the municipality of Maastricht, the province of Limburg and the Creative Industries Fund NL.

For the publication ‘SOURCE #07: What if we were all producers (of energy)?’ published by the Master departments of the Design Academy Eindhoven (ISBN 978-94-91400-04-9), I photographed the EON energy plant located on the Maasvlakte in Rotterdam. The publication is a result of a joint project with E.ON about the future of energy for which the first year master students developed a series of scenarios.

Tourist Information Rotterdam-Istanbul

Taksim Square 2012

In August 2012, I spent a week in Istanbul by invitation of Perplekcity, a collective for urban programming in Rotterdam (currently called Office for Metropolitan Information). On their indication, I photographed several locations in Istanbul that would be subject to change due to urban redevelopment in the near future.
One of those locations was Gezi Park, that one year later would become centre stage for the civil unrest and following riots, contesting the urban redevelopment plans for Taksim Square and the adjacent Gezi Park. I became so fascinated by the public life on Taksim Square, that next to photographing the different locations throughout the city, I decided to document the square during several days on several moments, on a more micro level, following the moments of the people and their actions relatively close. Obviously not knowing what would happen one year later, these photos became a document of a public life that was intentionally obstructed by the government. I portrayed the square on 35mm color slides, and presented it as a 2-channel slide installation in the exhibition next to 5 framed images of the other locations. In 2013, I planned an extension of the project to document the urban restructuring but had to cancel because of the riots. To compensate for my physical absence, I recorded some of the building activities and the riots as recorded live by web cams in and around Taksim Square.

Those images taken in 2012 will now form the basis for the project ‘Common Ground’ that has been lingering since 2016 and that I will hopefully pick up soon again. In ‘Common Ground’ 2 prolific urban spaces in almost opposite cities are brought together in the same space: Taksim Square in Istanbul and Sergels Torg in Stockholm. Both places are symbols of civil society, the changes and structuring of their publicness by means of urban (re)design reflect transformations in their respective political and social situations.

Sketches for slide installation

Sergels Torg, 2016

About Tourist Information Rotterdam - Istanbul:
In Rotterdam a temporary tourist information centre for Istanbul was created where Rotterdam’ based photographers Kim Bouvy and Hans Wilschut offered their vision of the highly populated city of Istanbul. The enormous changes that have swept through Istanbul are also visible in its urban planning. For Tourist Information Istanbul, they visited both the city’s famous and lesser-known locations, like the modernistic city hall and the residential area Bosporus City. The Istanbul bureau SO? Architecture & ideas devised a unique presentation with the work of the photographers and designers. Tourist Information temporarily becomes the fictitious centre of a city in another city.

In 2012 The Netherlands and Turkey celebrated 400 years of diplomatic relations. In Tourist Information, both cities were presented in a new way, as ‘promotion’ through the eyes of artists and with the works of architects. They were literally put on the map in another city, where the photographers and architects presented an image of the city, responding to existing campaigns with personal and artistic reflections. The artists were challenged to explore their artistic view to create a new and alternative ‘campaign’, exploring the sense of the city with their own means.

Tourist Information Rotterdam-Istanbul is a project initiated and produced by Perplekcity, Pieter Kuster and Emine Yilmazgil, a collective for urban programming.

Photographers: Kim Bouvy, Hans Wilschut, Ali Taptik and Serkan Taycan

Architects: SO? Architecture and Ideas, 2012 Architecten

Stadium, Kasımpaşa - Kim Bouvy 2012

Installation shots exhibition ‘Taksim Square’, - Kim Bouvy 2012
(double channel slide installation, 154 35 mm slides)

5 new works I made during a short stay in the North German town of Wilhelmshaven on invitation by Dr. Viola Weigel from Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven. The new works were shown together with the installation ‘Phantom City’.

The title of the exhibition refers to the seminal publication ‘Learning from Las Vegas’ by Scott Brown, Venturi and Izenour (revised ed. 1977) which, indirectly, formed my starting point when photographing the city of Wilhelmshaven.
There, I was not looking so much for similarities between the two cities, but tried to grasp the vernacular specificity of this seemingly anonymous urban fabric in the North of Germany. The 5 images displayed were all taken along one road, the Bundesstrasse/Bismarckstrasse, cutting through the different fabrics of this rather dispersed city.

‘Lena’ - c-print on aluminum, 75 x 95 cm

The exhibition takes a certain assumed analogy between the two harbor cities of Wilhelmshaven and Rotterdam as starting point: both were damaged during the Second World War (Wilhelmshaven also during WW I), both cities are closely tied to their harbor and therefore ’sacrificed’ for a greater cause in different moments in history to serve a purpose that goes beyond its own economical and social borders.
A new phase for Wilhelmshaven will commence soon: In August 2012, the JadeWeserPort will be opened: a new and Germany’s only deep water container port located at the German Bight on the North East side of Wilhelmshaven. The other deep water port in Western Europe is…Rotterdam. The realization of the JDW port is in a sense connecting the two cities and harbors - not the least as competitors. Not only looking at Rotterdam in an economical sense, but also learning from Rotterdam in a social and cultural sense might be valuable, is what (the curator of) this exhibition is implying.

The magazine ‘KW’ published in June featured our works and texts about Rotterdam and Wilhelmshaven by ao Viola Weigel and Caroline von Courten.

http://www.kunsthalle-wilhelmshaven.de

‘Stoever’ - c-print on aluminum, 75 x 95 cm

‘Bayram Markt’ - c-print on aluminum, 75 x 95 cm

‘International’ - c-print on aluminum, 75 x 95 cm

Installation shots Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven

slide installation ‘Phanton City’, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven

On March 10 2012, the publication ‘The Dutch Photo book’ was presented at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, a book containing a selection of 124 books published between 1945-2010 that describes the relatively recent history of the famed Dutch photo book. I am very proud and honored to see my book ‘ Phantom City’ in the selection on page 184. Published by Nai Publishers, ed. Frits Gierstberg, Rik Suermondt.

The Dutch Photobook

The Dutch Photobook describes the relatively recent history of the famed Dutch photobook. Editors Rik Suermondt and Frits Gierstberg chose over 120 of the most significant Dutch photobooks and placed them in the context of developments in photography and society.

The post-Second World War Dutch photobook is unique because of the long tradition of graphic designers and photographers working closely together. It is highly prized abroad, and many photobooks have become part of the collections of museums and private collectors. This book shows the immense variety and allure of the Dutch photobook and makes it accessible to a broad audience.

Six chapters, organized both thematically and chronologically, examine company photobooks, photobooks about youth culture, landscape books, city books, travelogues and autonomous photobooks. For each theme, the 20 most noteworthy books are described and represented by gorgeous illustrations of their covers and parts of their contents.

Available March 2012
Editors: Frits Gierstberg, Rik Suermondt
Authors: Wim van Sinderen, Claudia Kussel, Patricia Börger, Pim Milo, Flip Bool, Karen Duking, Max van Rooij, Tamara Berghmans, Mirelle Thijsen, Bart Sorgedrager, Mireille de Putter, Pieter van Leeuwen, Karin Krijgsman
Photography: Hans Bol
Design: Studio Joost Grootens, Illustrated (colour), Hardback, 240 pages, 24 x 28 cm
English edition, ISBN 978-90-5662-846-8, € 59.50
Dutch edition, ISBN 978-90-5662-845-1

Exhibition at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam from 10 March until 20 May 2012

In September 2011, another book about photo books, this time about Germany in the Photobook - ‘Deutschland im Fotobuch’ - was published by Steidl (ed. Thomas Wiegand, Manfred Heiting): ‘Niemandsland’ can be found on page 305.

Deutschland im Fotobuch
Thomas Wiegand, Manfred Heiting

Welche Fotobücher haben auf besonders überzeugende und charakteristische Weise Einblick in »Deutschland« gegeben? Deutschland im Fotobuch zeigt sie: Bücher aus den letzten Tagen des Kaiserreichs und der Weimarer Republik, aus dem »Dritten Reich«, der Bundesrepublik, der DDR und dem wiedervereinigten Deutschland. Viele wichtige Fotografen sind mit gestalterisch geschlossenen Werken zum Thema vertreten: August Sander und Albert Renger-Patzsch, Abisag Tüllmann und Edith Rimkus, Leonard Freed und George Hashiguchi, Dirk Reinartz, Chargesheimer, Will McBride, Heinrich Riebesehl, Christian Borchert u.v.a. Deutschland im Fotobuch versammelt 273 Werke, die mit Beispielseiten, einem kurzen Text und bibliografischen Daten vorgestellt werden. Der Band ist in thematische Gruppen gegliedert: Landschaften, Städte, Menschen, Arbeit, Architektur, Zeitgeschehen, Grenzen, »Typisch deutsch« u.a. Jedes Kapitel wird von einem Essay eingeleitet.

Book Gebunden im Schuber
Language: German
ISBN: 978-3-86930-249-2
Publication date: September 2011
Steidl

Both books can still be ordered at my web store here.