About Marijke Holtrop & Her Photographs of the Assabet River NWR

Marijke Holtrop photographed the Assabet River NWR between 2001 and 2005 during the period after the property was transferred to the FWS and before it was open to the public. Her exquisite photographic record of the refuge was featured at the Friends Monthly Meeting in August 2009 titled “Four Seasons of the Assabet River NWR”. Her photos grace the cover of the Comprehensive Conservation Plan for the Refuge and accompany the text, are on the Friends’ brochures and accompany many other articles about the refuge.

Marijke was born in The Netherlands and arrived here in 1969. She spent many years as a researcher in orthopedics at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She used photography first in her medical research to record both light and electron microscopic images of bone cells. Over time she learned to recognize an inherent underlying order of the components within the cells and in the relationships of the cells with their environs. Many of these photographs of the natural world inside of us were published in scientific articles and textbooks of histology. When she turned to color photography of the natural world outside of us, she became increasingly aware of a similar order underlying the beauty of shapes and colors, both within small objects such as flowers, leaves and feathers, and in their relationship to their environs. At times something would catch her special attention and inspire her to use the camera as a creative tool in expressing the harmony she perceived.

In Marijke’s own words:

The Refuge was my personal refuge, a “homecoming” in my personal life.