Who owns the city? In his research project Haven, opening at Foam, Sem Langendijk attempts to capture the environment of his youth: a place that no longer exists. Haven examines the environments of different port cities in various phases of transition, highlighting the transformation of disused docklands and the communities that reside there — showing not only a process of urban development but also of social exclusion.
Piecing together the mundane as silent signifiers of gentrification, Langendijk's criticism lies not in the natural cycle of how cities develop, but in the loss of character and history in the current trend of large-scale re-development projects. Having photographed in Amsterdam’s ADM, the Docklands of London and Red Hook in New York, at times it’s hard to distinguish one place from another in the homogenous and anonymous architecture of glass, metal and concrete that replaces the cultural imprint these places once had.
