A made bed lies under a layer of dust, and the wallpaper is coming away layer by layer. Above the bed, a single small painting is the only thing that has kept its colour.

For ten years now, abandoned, decaying buildings have drawn father and daughter Maarten and Billie Slagboom like a magnet. Once inside, it seems at first glance as if time has frozen, but nothing could be further from the truth. What they see is nature, in the guise of ferns, fungi, algae and mosses, reclaiming its place in an environment made entirely by human hands. In their photographs the duo records how everything we spend a lifetime trying to control is absorbed back into the greater whole, how reason and purpose surrender to the randomness and mystery of nature. The new life thus breathed into the building is as exciting as it is reassuring.

‘Decay,’ writes Manon Uphoff in her afterword to De overgave (The Surrender), the new volume in their photobook series Hier woont alleen de tijd (Only Time Lives Here; Kyosei, 2026), ‘is a tender event.’