I was born and raised in IJmuiden, the Netherlands, and continue to live there. The steel industry is not an abstract subject to me; it is part of the environment that shaped me. For generations it has defined work, knowledge and identity in this region. Tata Steel IJmuiden is deeply embedded in the economic and cultural structure of the region, while also standing at the center of environmental debates, regulatory pressure and sustained media scrutiny. That tension does not form the argument of this work, but the atmosphere in which it takes shape.

I do not approach this landscape as an outsider forming an opinion from a distance, but as someone situated within the same social and physical reality in which these discussions take place.

The site is largely closed off from public view. Behind fences and security zones lies an environment defined by infrastructure, heat, sound and controlled movement. Door het vuur/ Through the Fire stems from the desire to make this environment visible from within, not as exposure, but as a spatial experience. The project is a long term photographic investigation of an industrial system that reveals itself in fragments. Production unfolds through corridors, platforms, conveyor lines and furnace halls. Movement determines what becomes visible. Light shifts between artificial glare and haze. Fire, steam and dust interrupt any sense of overview.

Within this landscape, people appear as passers by: present, but not central. They move through the frame, cross routes and disappear again from view. Their presence marks time and passage without defining the system itself. Taken together, the photographs suggest a map without a fixed center. They do not follow a linear narrative, but reveal a spatial structure in which orientation remains local and temporary. Looking becomes a situated act shaped by infrastructure and movement.

Through the Fire is an independent, long-term photographic project, developed autonomously and carried out with permission to access the site.