March 2020. Time suddenly comes to a standstill. Planes are grounded, road traffic is sparse, people slow down and stay at home. It looks as though a bell jar has been put over the world. Yet, another world is awakening. Birds sing more than ever. A dolphin swims right through Istanbul. Wild boar roam the streets of Paris and a herd of deer wander the streets of London.

But beneath it all is fear. Fear of infection … fear of the other, of the surfaces that he may have touched, of skin contact. We stay two metres away from each other … find ourselves one, if allowed ten kilometres from home and we return straightaway. This brings us back in time. It is the distance and reach of a growing child. Our view does not look beyond our immediate surroundings and we zoom in. As does Dijkers. Having just moved from Rotterdam to Harborne – a leafy suburb of Birmingham – he takes short nocturnal walks.

His photos are not just images of the night, they smell of the nocturnal world, of damp green and moss-covered trees.

Excerpt from the book ‘A Clot in Time’. Text by Charlotte Van Lingen - Art Curator Het Valkhof Nijmegen / Kunsthal Rotterdam (NL).