Stijn Hoekstra is a Dutch photographer and cinematographer who combines commercial work with personal projects while travelling the world. From Cuba to New York, Georgia to Japan, Hoekstra’s work has taken him all over but when the world closed for travel due to pandemic restrictions, he turned his focus on his hometown to capture life in lockdown in one of the world’s most photogenic cities. Catching the city after a snowstorm, Amsterdam appears even eerier with the dearth of people dramatized by the frozen layer of icy white that blankets the ground.
Empty escalators, abandoned bikes, sad red-lit windows, and desolate streets capture the curfew enforced by the Dutch government that ordered people indoors from 9:00pm till 04:30am. Leaving the house to see the first snowfall of winter, Hoekstra found an Amsterdam you could hardly imagine, a lonely, beautiful landscape in which the city has lost its people. See more of his work on his website and Instagram.
Images © Stijn Hoekstra