For a whole year, photographer Ad van Denderen lived and breathed the Dutch military.


He photographed new recruits, the training they underwent and life on Dutch army bases. But he also took pictures of the army on its mission to Afghanistan and of those who stayed at home.

Twenty years after the reunification of Germany, the Dutch military is constantly in the news and that made it a perfect subject for the twelfth edition of Document Nederland, the annual photographic commission awarded by the Rijksmuseum and NRC Handelsblad.