Borealis - Life in the Woods

The importance of the forests on our planet was never clearer than now. It is the trees that filter the huge CO2 emissions from our atmosphere. For their Borealis project, photographer Jeroen Toirkens (1971) and journalist and television maker Jelle Brandt Corstius (1978) have visited the forests of the boreal zone for the past four years. This boreal zone is a circle of protruding coniferous forests, which extends over the northern parts of Europe, Asia and America. Thirty percent of all trees are in the zone and are essential for maintaining the ecological balance on earth. They convert CO2 into oxygen on a large scale. Yet less than twelve percent of these forests are protected areas and are threatened from all sides: commercial logging, vulnerability of new plantings and proliferating fires, such as last summer in Siberia.

Jeroen Toirkens and Jelle Brandt Corstius have searched for Borealis for the stories of the forests and the people who inhabit them. Now that the effects of climate change can be seen and felt more clearly, it is important to tell these stories. The images of Toirkens bear witness to the age-old mythical advertisements of the forests, but also show the ways in which the inhabitants of the boreal zone subdue and protect their habitat. The exhibition in Fotomuseum Den Haag shows all eight chapters of the project, up to and including the personal capstone of Toirkens and Brandt Corstius in Alaska, not previously shown.

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