After-thought

- Beauty is indestructable. -

Ather-Thought looks at the places where the built world has begun to withdraw. Houses, walls and foundations show the marks of time, pressure and neglect. Vegetation pushes through cracks, bricks collapse, and structures lose the certainty they once had. These images are not simply about decay. They show a landscape in transition, a landscape that has been shaped by human decisions and then left to bear the consequences.

The series was created during the period of the Groningen gasquake crisis, when people were losing their homes and were not being heard. In that context, the idea of imagining hopeful futures felt disconnected from reality. Ather-Thought does not offer a new world of dreams. It shows the world that already exists: a world built on extraction, on promises that were not kept, and on the quiet endurance of those who had to live with the damage.

In these photographs, the sacred is not found in renewal or optimism. It appears in the persistence of what remains, in the honesty of broken surfaces, and in the way nature continues to move through places where certainty has failed.

Ather-Thought was shown during an exhibition that invited artists to imagine hopeful futures. In the shadow of the Groningen gasquake crisis, this invitation felt out of tune. While new worlds were being celebrated, the real world in Groningen was collapsing. Homes were cracking, people were waiting for help, and the consequences of decades of extraction were becoming visible.

This series presents that reality. It shows structures under pressure, places where nature and time reveal what has been overlooked. Ather-Thought asks the viewer to look closely at the world that already exists before imagining another one.

An old, abandoned brick house surrounded by leafless trees and overgrown grass under a cloudy sky.
Old brick building with four small windows and an abandoned chicken coop in front, overgrown with weeds and moss.
Broken glass window with scattered bricks and debris on the floor inside a damaged building.
A pile of old, weathered red bricks stacked against a wall, with some green moss and small plants growing between them. Ivy plants with green leaves and thin, dry vines drape over the bricks.
An old brick wall with broken and missing bricks, surrounded by overgrown bushes and branches.
An old house with boarded-up windows and peeling paint is situated in a yard with bare trees and an overcast sky.
The image depicts a weathered wall of a building with two large wooden doors in the middle, reinforced with nails. The wall on the left side is made of concrete, while the part with the doors is of aged wood. There is a small, broken window frame lyi
An overgrown, abandoned house with peeling paint, surrounded by leafless trees and dense tangled bushes.
A weathered, gray concrete wall partially covered by dark green ivy leaves and vine tendrils.
Close-up of dirt ground with scattered broken bricks, small green plants, moss, and tree roots.
Broken glass and a tree trunk in a wooded area.
Debris of broken concrete and wood scattered among dry grass and leafless bushes.
The photo series After-Thought made by Egbert Jonkers. All rights reserved.