My contribution to Belgian newspaper De Standaard’s yearly summer photo project 2026. Nine of us photographers would get a word that we’d base a photo series on: this year it was ‘summer’. I chose ‘summer solstice’. Ever since working on a story about folklore a couple of years before, I fantasized about exploring the topic more. I started looking into local summer solstice traditions.

These past couple of years I’ve been reading more and more about modern witches. How the term is being reclaimed and how the general public is only now realizing that women whom were called witches throughout history (and were murdered for it; up to a 100.000!) were just women we’d call independent these days. Opinionated. Outside the norm. I’d most probably be called a witch myself 400 years ago.

I looked into modern witch clans in the Netherlands and reached out to many of them. For weeks I would not get any replies. And the ones I did get were rejections. I understood, I know how careful and closed these communities are. I didn’t blame them. I decided to shift my focus to other types of solstice celebrations. 

But then the Wise Woman of the Heerlen-based Triple Goddess clan responded. She wanted to meet with me. She and her clan ultimately decided to give me permission to join their summer solstice celebration, called ‘Litha’ in pagan traditions.

Heerlen, Netherlands, 2026.