misha de ridder (NL, 1971) is a visual artist working with photography and video based in Amsterdam.

after graduating University of the Arts Utrecht in 1996 misha de ridder's work has been widely exhibited amongst others at Coda Museum, Foam Photography Museum, FoMu Photo Museum Antwerp, Juliètte Jongma Gallery, Rosegallery Santa Monica, Triennial of Photography Hamburg, Museum of the City of New York and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. de ridder’s work has been acquired by major collections like the Amsterdam City Archives, Foam Photography Museum, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Museum Voorlinden.

de ridder published seven monographs: Sightseeing (De Balie 2000), Wilderness (Artimo 2003), Abendsonne (Schaden 2011),
Dune (Lavalette 2011), Solstice (Native 2012), Falaise (Roma 2016) and high up close by (Roma 2019).

featuring geography, light, weather and ephemeral phenomena misha de ridder creates photographs and video work of almost absurd brilliance. his quiet images evoke contemplation and intimacy and invite you to look anew to what you think you know, to rethink your relation to what surrounds, envelops you. how the perceptual and the conceptual are intrinsically connected is an important theme in the work. reality is an act of deep imagination. mechanical representations produced with the machine eye of the camera disclose for us another, almost magical perspective. the camera helps us to see the way we are intertwined with the world, to make palpable that we are part of this entity as a given that transcends us. something that is both as real as it is incomprehensible.


    "At a moment when technology is increasingly mediating the relationship people have with their surroundings, de Ridder’s work pushes us to go out and explore what we are missing. It is not often that photographs of such visceral beauty can elicit a deep, meaningful engagement with how we perceive and understand the world around us."
    - Albada Jelgersma Gallery, press release 'resilience'

    "Sometimes natural phenomena can become so estranged and mysterious, that we are inclined to describe them as unreal realities. It might be the extraordinary shape of a tree, a mountain, a shadow, a cloud or the mirroring reflection of nature in a lake, but it is foremost the unfamiliarity of the natural aesthetics of reality. Misha de Ridder’s works can be seen as attempts to capture these temporary phenomena and atmospheres of nature within the still medium of photography. By seeking for the absence of human intervention, by waiting for the climax of the temporal aesthetic and by pushing the camera to its technical limits De Ridder’s photographs become both exotic reports as autonomous artificial worlds."
    - Galerie Juliètte Jongma, press release 'Abendsonne'

    "As an artist, De Ridder makes images that could easily become saccharine calendar art or empty exercises in sublime kitsch. Arctic sunsets, verdant dunes and dense forests have all been De Ridder's subjects, but he has always succeeded in pushing them to a new level and forced us to look again - either through inventive design in the case of Wilderness or editorial restraint and focus, as in the case of Dune. In some ways, De Ridder's works are so forcefully anachronistic that they are contemporary. It takes a brave and talented soul to tackle the sublime landscape and succeed like De Ridder."
    - Adam Bell, PhotoEye Magazine

    "To search, to disclose and to write with light is what Misha de Ridder does in his landscape photos and videos. He does not seek the comfort zone of the beautiful and picturesque, but the sublime. It is a quest for entering into a confrontation with nature as a given larger than ourselves, to re-visualize a greatness that is both realistic but also inconceivable. Landscape is a paradox: how can we hold as an image what perhaps can't be photographed, the change of light for example, or the tactility of the landscape. The greatness lifts us beyond borders we are not always able to comprehend, not mentally, nor in feeling. Landscape is not only seen, but is a multi-sensory experience with knowledge and craft."
    - Professor Erik A. de Jong, opening speech 'Solstice',
      Foam Photography Museum