ich bin waldviertel

My name is Carla and I am a documentary photographer from the Netherlands.

After working in the theatre industry for almost 25 years, I changed my horizon and studied at the Foto Academie Amsterdam, where I graduated end 2011. In 2012, I was commissioned by Szene Bunte Wähne, a youth theater festival in Austria, to make a documentary about the rural Waldviertel region. The region is situated between Vienna and Czech Republic. I grew up in a rural area myself in Holland. I went back there in 2011 but could not find my youth, my memories, my childhood. However I did find them in Austria. In 2012 I met Sonja, the mother of Hannah and Alena, in front of her farm at the local pond and she invited me over to come over to her house. Soon she also offered me a bed and grandma’s daily hot meal (at noon tme) , and so I could be even closer to my sujects. And since that time I spend every summer a couple of weeks at the farm and follow the daily summer lives of the children in the village. The project is still ongoing. I grew up myself in a rural area in the eastern part of Holland. The kids in the Waldviertel remind me of a childhood I longed for but didn’t have.