Open Theme nominee

This series tells the story of the inexorable progression of Nature, from her infiltration of a Belgian greenhouse (1) to the imprisonment with her strong roots of a Taiwanese mansion (5).
The next steps? Collapse and burial.
What will then be left of our civilization?
Man builds, Man abandons. Every time for his own peculiar reasons. Nature does not care about those reasons. But one thing is for sure, when Man leaves, She comes back and takes back everything.
Man produces and throws away when the need is not felt anymore. Recycling and redeveloping are not systematic enough in our current societies.
At a time when Man’s domination of Nature has never been so extreme, we are talking about the sixth extinction of life on Earth.
Nature is stronger, and whatever happens to Man, She will always be there. Knowing that, instead of confronting her all the time, Man should walk hand in hand with Nature.

Jonk travels the world looking for abandoned places.
Today, he has visited more than one thousands of them in more than forty countries on four continents.
With time, his interest has focused on what appeared to him to be the strongest in this vast subject of abandonment: Nature taking over. It is poetic, even magic, to see this Nature retaking what used to be hers, reintegrating through broken windows, cracks on the walls, spaces built by Man and then neglected, until sometimes guzzling them up entirely.
In March 2018, he released the book Naturalia on the topic and currently works on volume II.
In June 2018, he quits his job in the finance to fully dedicate himself to this project.
Since, two other books have been released and his work has been featured in prestigious paper publications (Der Spiegel, Corriere della Sera…) as well as on prestigious web platforms (National Geographic, Smithsonian, ArchDaily, AD, Lonely Planet…). It has been part of many group shows across the world (Paris, Rome, Athens, Budapest, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Seoul, Tokyo…) as well as several solo shows in Paris.
Several personal exhibitions of Naturalia are planned for 2019 and 2020.