^{_{This photo was taken for the Green Office’s Autumn Photography Competition, on the theme: Decay, which took place between the months of October-November 2022.}}

I was wandering around Leiden, the city I was born and raised in, as if I were a tourist. In one of the alleyways around the Pieterskerk I saw this magazine, half rained away and half still kind of readable.

To me it looked like a perfect still shot of how: on the one hand, paper is rarely used anymore and tossed away like it is nothing; on the other hand, we still use a lot of paper in our daily life and might not appreciate what it does for us. After closer inspection I saw the magazine was published by the Leidsche Schouwburg and included the whole schedule for that cultural year.

Another aspect that spoke to me, especially now that I've started my Arts, ,Media, and Society bachelor's, is how we disregard the culture sector here in the Netherlands. Even after reading the more detailed explanation on the website, about the decay of nature, I still felt this picture was a beautiful fit, as it shows the disregard for nature in the way we use it.

The pages of the magazine are probably made of wood, of trees, in a sense nature used by us humans to our profit. It shows the circle in which nature repeats itself, how even as we humans try to make ourselves the most important and try to interfere with nature, eventually (almost) everything will find its way back to it. Eventually almost everything will decay and will be nutrition for another piece of nature.