Never before has a working-class neighborhood - to be demolished - been so poignantly portrayed; intense portraits interspersed with hushed universal images, of an environment that will disappear. Van Cuyk won the trust of the residents and for a year immersed his camera in a strongly non-conformist culture. The photography is at the intersection of autonomous art and documentary-social photography. It is a story about disconnection and abandonment. What does it do to people when you are taken from your familiar surroundings? But it is also a story about stigmas and about deviating from the established order. I love the Democracy Photographers. It feels like an injustice that there are things that are not fully seen. For me, there is no such thing as ugliness. It is precisely impermanence that carries enormous beauty.'
