Poet, writer, and musician Henjo Hekman has a collection of about 2,500 “parallel cards”, meaning postcards in which the same images are repeatedly used, but which refer to different places. Conceptual artist Bas Fontein, whose work focuses on collections of texts and images, came upon a portion of this collection by chance in a hotel on the Dutch island of Terschelling. With Hekman’s permission, he has used these parallel cards to create the panoramas found in this publication – idyllic vacation spots, beaches, sunsets, and natural settings along the Dutch coast that have unwittingly become the manufactured by-product of tourism, at once everywhere and nowhere.

Poet, writer, and musician Henjo Hekman has a collection of about 2,500 “parallel cards”, meaning postcards in which the same images are repeatedly used, but which refer to different places. Conceptual artist Bas Fontein, whose work focuses on collections of texts and images, came upon a portion of this collection by chance in a hotel on the Dutch island of Terschelling. With Hekman’s permission, he has used these parallel cards to create the panoramas found in this publication – idyllic vacation spots, beaches, sunsets, and natural settings along the Dutch coast that have unwittingly become the manufactured by-product of tourism, at once everywhere and nowhere.