Misha de Ridder

1609

Museum of the City of New York, 2009

What made New York such an ideal place to settle 400 years ago?

The 17th century poet Jacob Steendam praised the purity of the air, the tender grass plains,

wild cherries and singing birds. The turkeys were so big and numerous that they ‘clouded the

sky’. It was the Garden of Eden. It’s that untamed and lush feeling of paradise that Misha de

Ridder wants to evoke in the viewer of his photos. The dark and moody photos bring in a

sense that what you are seeing is from another time, another world.