Checked baggage

The checked baggage book ( 2004) was the first of two graduation projects by Christien for Design Academy Eindhoven. The books’ content is an exhaustive catalogue of all the items confiscated from travellers in a one-week period at Schiphol Airport. Everything from children’s cutlery to potato knives, hairdressers’ scissors to nail clippers were amongst the items seized and later photographed and depicted in the book. Meindertsma wanted to capture the strangeness of this situation; the confiscation of what were sometimes personal items at a time when security was hightened, and to demonstrate it visually. With each book sold, the purchaser also received one of the original confiscated items.

Litterature: Martin Parr and Gerry Badge, The Photobook: A History, volume II, Phaidon Press, Londen 2006, page 287, Martin Parr, Martin Parr's Best Books of the Decade, Photoireland, Dublin 2011, page 18-19, Frits Gierstberg and Rik Suermondt, Het Nederlandse fotoboek, Een thematisch selectie, na 1945, NAi Uitgevers, Rotterdam 2012, page 210.