Published reviews
Review of Quiet Amsterdam, Eyemazing, International photography magazine
May/June 2009
Page 186, ‘Bookcase’, Lisa Holden, 2009
‘De Volkskrant’ (Dutch National Newspaper)
Book Review: Art critic’s guide to peaceful places in Amsterdam
Does this Amsterdam exist in reality?
Exhibition curator Siobhan Wall has produced a guide to the uncelebrated - i.e. quiet and tranquil - places of Amsterdam. Such as parks where you can lie on the grass.
by Merel Bem,
How perplexing photographs can be! If a tourist 50 years hence were to look at two guides to Amsterdam, say Time Out and the just published Quiet Amsterdam - which images should they believe? The first explodes in your face, each page crammed with arresting colour photos and endless information on all you can do in a big city with a (relatively) large population. The second is a paragon of sobriety with traditional black-and-white pictures ... guiding tourists through a city of dignity and seclusion, where few people actually seem to live.
Art critic and exhibition curator Siobhan Wall - since recently also a photographer - set out a while ago to discover ‘quiet’ Amsterdam. It’s out there somewhere, believed British-born Wall who has lived in the Dutch capital since 2000. What began as a quest to get familiar with her new urban dwelling place has ripened into a charming little square and unadorned guide, packed with tips on slow-food restaurants, parks where you can just lie about on the grass, and bookshops where the silence is broken only by the tinkle of a doorbell.
Quiet Amsterdam, in other words. The cover photo shows a solitary seagull, a bit of the Wester tower and the pearly white gable crest of a canal-side house against a clouded sky. ‘Easy’, the sceptic might think ‘point to the sky and it’s pretty sure there’ll be no people’. But look inside and the cynic is soon confounded.
Wall’s photographs are not only beautiful, they’re contagious. If you’re turned off by the typical ‘Amsterdam’ image (bustling crowds, cursing cyclists and endless ding-dong of trams) you should certainly cast an eye on these images. For the city can look like this too: unpeopled. Some places are virtually unrecognisable, like the pavement in front of Maison de Bonneterie on the busy Rokin, the photo illustrating Walls’s tip for a quiet coffee break in the department store’s café. Did she maybe get up at dawn to take her picture? But no, the store lights are blazing and bikes are parked against its gable.
Quiet Amsterdam divides into various categories: parks, libraries, art galleries and churches - places you would expect to be relaxing - but also restaurants and cafés, where customers are usually coming and going and likely enough queuing up for a table at the window. But not so on Walls’s photos: her cafés - aside from an odd person or two - are empty.
Does this Amsterdam exist in reality? One can’t help thinking that some of Walls’s pictures were deliberately taken before or after closing time, so unreal is their serenity. Yet Quiet Amsterdam doesn’t really make an overly nostalgic or unrealistic impression. Often the very thought that strikes is: ‘Of course! I’d totally forgotten about that spot, that park, you could really chill out there’.
Quiet Amsterdam is published by Image Found Publishers, a small and very young Amsterdam publisher specialising in limited edition books on art and photography, in English. The first print run of Quiet Amsterdam is only 1,000 copies. Amid the general run of city guides the book itself is an oasis of serenity with its simple and effective design. Highly recommended for anyone seeking to rediscover their love for Amsterdam. Maybe the publishers should expand that print run after all.
Siobhan Wall: Quiet Amsterdam
Image Found Publishers; Amsterdam; € 17.95;
ISBN 978 90 79865 01 7.
Expatica website December 2008
Quiet Amsterdam
"What do you get when an ex-art critic/art school lecturer flees the busy London life to recuperate in the Netherlands?
The answer is a beautiful limited edition art book which guides one to places in Amsterdam with ‘spirit of place’, whether they be parks, woods, museums, shops, restaurants, libraries, or simply places to sit.
After three years of research, by bike and on foot, Siobhan Wall is thrilled to have Quiet Amsterdam in her hands.
“The book is a celebration of Amsterdam,” says Siobhan. “It is positive about quietness, not negative about noise.”
The peaceful black and white images take up most of each page, and below each image is a short text giving information about each chosen space or building as well as details on how to get there.
“I wanted to include hotels and restaurants because people visiting Amsterdam often have no idea of where to find restful places to stay or eat,” says Siobhan.
You could say that her book informs like a clued-up Amsterdam-based friend could when asked for tip-offs on where to stay, have a meal, go for a walk, find small, independent shops, and relax. This pocket-sized photo book is full of useful information you’d like to share with both people who have lived in Amsterdam for a long time as well as family and friends paying a visit. .
Admittedly, Siobhan had to leave out 90 of her chosen places simply because “there wasn’t room to include them.”
Glancing inside the book, I see that I agree with her choice of Café Restaurant Amsterdam, Sai Mithra Yoga Centre, the nature garden in Westerpark and Rembrantpark, because I know them."