Going Dutch Blog

(Emily Naff) As I prepare for the upcoming Fall semester, I find myself reflecting on my summer adventures.   I am sure that fellow faculty members and students will be curious about my experience teaching photography in The Netherlands.   So, I spent a little time looking over student work and selecting what I thought were some of the best photographs taken by my students this summer.  The students photographed a wide variety of subjects for their various assignments. Assignments included architecture, shadows, reflections, graphic elements, the power of color and sense of place. Work by all students is included in this slideshow: Ryan Farmer, Trinity Falter, Matthew Zingg, Dylan Kahn and Lindsey Overhalser.  To see work by each individual student follow the link to the NING Website.

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(Trinity Falter) We had a rough beginning, with planes, trains and trams. After finally getting our rooms, going to dinner and crashing for the night, it was all blue skies from then on out. The first couple of days in Amsterdam we had beautiful weather (we were spoiled). The first week was full of sightseeing and snapshots. It took some time adjusting to the craziness of just crossing the street. Unless you wanted to get hit by a various number of things, you needed to look in about five different directions. It was difficult to get from point A to point B when half of the time the people with the map had no sense of direction, lol. It only took about a week to know where most things were.

—Trinity Falter Read the rest of this entry »

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A presentation I did comparing Amsterdam canal houses to a Modern Dutch neighborhood based on the concept of the canal house.

—Jamie

May 31, 2009

The flight to Amsterdam was pretty long. I had a hard time keeping myself entertained. My lower back was killing me. We got off the plane and onto a train. From the train we got on the tram and that’s when the trouble started. There wasn’t really enough room for us on the tram so we had to stand. It was really jolty, I thought I was going to fall over. Teela and I kept getting pushed further and further from the group. Then all of a sudden the group was gone and Teela and I couldn’t get off the tram. Once we got to the next stop we bolted back to the previous stop only to find that our group had left us. We wandered around a few blocks and couldn’t find any information or anyone to ask. We asked three different groups of people and got three different directions. Our backs were killing us from carrying luggage. We finally found a guy who knew exactly where it was. It was back where we started. We did eventually get to the hostel at the relief of our teachers and us. From there we went to breakfast at a pancake house. I got the lemon pancakes thinking they would be fruitier than sweet, but there were sugar crystals in the lemon sauce, thus making it sweet.

—Jamie

Here’s our group at the entrance to Vondel Park, where our hostel is located. Left to right, this is Dylan Kahn, Trinity Falter, Matthew Zing, Teela Fleeman, Lydia Light, Andy Gregg, Jamie Harper, Lindsey Overhalser, Ryan Farmer, Emily Naff, and me.

We’re beginning our second week in Amsterdam. So far we’ve explored the city, seen several museums, found some good restaurants, taken a canal tour, and learned to keep out of the bike lanes!

—Todd Duren

Today is Sunday, the same day that we arrived last week. Since we have gotten used to our new routine and are enjoying it, I thought that in today’s blog entry I’d tell you about a “typical” day in the Going Dutch program.
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Amsterdam fact: Forty years ago in March of 1969, Beatle John Lennon and conceptual artist Yoko Ono spent part of their honey moon in bed at the Amsterdam Hilton hotel. That wouldn’t have been very interesting itself, except that they invited the press in daily and gave interviews in their jammies, sitting in bed and talking about ending the Vietnam War. This year the Amsterdam Hilton let the public visit their room, as covered in this news story and detailed in the lyrics of the Beatles’ single “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”

“Drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton / Talking in our beds for a week / The news people said, say what’re you doing in bed? / I said we’re only trying to get us some peace”

Wikipedia says: “Knowing their March 20, 1969 marriage would be a huge press event, John and Yoko decided to use the publicity to promote world peace. After their other stunts, such as the nude cover of the Two Virgins album, the press were expecting them to be having sex, but instead the couple were sitting in bed—in John’s words “like Angels”—talking about peace with signs over their bed reading ‘Hair Peace’ and ‘Bed Peace’.”

In 1989 got to meet Yoko Ono when had an exhibit of her conceptual art work at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where I helped screen print her works onto the walls of the museum gallery. Later she talked to us about being artists, and she taught us “how to fly” by hopping off a stepladder.