Re-Order

A photographic project exploring how memory surfaces through objects, gestures, and place. Rooted in my time as a female cop, Re-Order reflects a sensitive, observational way of seeing that often clashed with the force — and became my strength.

When I joined the Dutch police force at 21, I wasn’t aware I was stepping into a world that would later shape — and shake — everything I believed about power, perception, and responsibility. I entered with idealism and curiosity, partly shaped by the television narratives I grew up with: female detectives who navigated darkness with empathy, complexity, and presence.

In reality, the work was raw and confronting. I served for years in the Schilderswijk, a district marked by inequality and systemic tension. I noticed things my male colleagues missed. I moved differently. I asked instead of ordered. That difference — rooted in a more sensitive, detailed way of seeing — often created friction. But it also made me a very good officer.

Eventually, the accumulation of intense experiences led to PTSD. What remained wasn’t a narrative, but scattered impressions — visual fragments, physical sensations, memory without structure.

Re-Order emerged from that aftermath. It’s not a document of events, but a slow investigation into how memory returns — distorted, partial, embodied. Each image responds to something that surfaced: a trace, a gesture, a fragment. Photography became a way to hold what I couldn’t put into words. Objects appear like clues in an unsolvable case. Light, space, and material act as evidence of what stayed behind.

This work has become the foundation for a new project currently in development. I’m now turning my gaze backwards, tracing how childhood memory and cultural conditioning shaped my path into the police. How do our earliest environments — especially as women — script the roles we later inhabit? And how do we make space for ourselves within frameworks that were never really made with us in mind?