Fairytale and Folklore Photography Competition

In first place, ‘Zwarte Juffer’ by Tessa Visser.

“This is the ‘Zwarte Juffer’. In Dutch folklore she lurks beside roads to cause harm to travellers. She is usually depicted as a pale, grieving woman wearing only black. She floats towards her victims and paralyzes their horse or pushes them off the road to the mercy of the evil creatures that hunt for stray travellers. The Zwarte Juffer is similar to the Irish Banshee in that both are women and an omen of death, often in your immediate family. Their difference is that Banshees are not necessarily harmful, whereas the Zwarte Juffer delights in causing harm.”

“I  have a fascination with hierarchy of scale within different fairytales. I like how authors play with the sizing of human-like creatures ranging from tiny fairies to towering giants. I wanted to use this technique on an individual to create a reality in which we are both the fairy and the giant. The designer of the garment was inspired by various fairytale characters and I wanted to honor that by putting the model in a multitude of roles.”

“Annabella is the princess with the dark horse. She lives in the woods with her band of bandits, robbing everyone who dares enter their forest. In the story, she robs and kidnaps a princess on her way to her wedding to the local prince. The prince enters the woods to find his bride and falls in a trap set by Annabella and her bandits. When the prince and Annabella see each other, they realize they grew up together. They fall in love and Annabella moves out of the forest, returning to her life as princess.”

“For those fortunate whose income is not affected by the snowstorm I hope you can agree with me that the week we had in February was truly magical. It’s not so often that the whole country stops. Instead of having busy cars on the roads you would have children laughing and playing with the snow with their parents and family, building their first ‘sneeuwmans’. Moreover, If you had taken a walk next to Binnehof, the place where this photo is taken, you would have noticed the majority of people smiling as seeing white in this country of rain ,in my opinion, is truly surreal and fairy-like.”

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