The Imaginary Friend

‘The Imaginary Friend’ depicts a dream of a young woman who commutes every morning by train across the Maas bridges on the Dordrecht-Rotterdam route. She passes an abandoned bridge keeper’s tower and imagines a friend lives there. She decides to bring him to life.

With the help of sculptor Stuart Smith of Madame Tussauds, an enigmatic figure takes shape. Because train passengers have mere seconds in passing to notice this inhabitant of the tower, their perception is fragmented and they never know exactly what they have seen. An image emerges of an eccentric hermit in a “folly” who briefly shakes travellers awake from their lethargy and stimulates the surreal life.

Photographer and writer Pieter van Oudheusden (1957-2013) recorded the appearance and disappearance of this enigmatic resident of the Wijnhaven Tower in hundreds of Polaroids.