I begin this endeavor as a hobby art project. Before the pandemic, I lived part-time on an Elandsgracht side street, and I loved sitting in the median and watching the world go by. I found it soothing and meditative, but also—with the rich variety of people and bikes and other vehicles—compelling and thought-provoking. And so I hatched the idea to film, Slow-TV-style but with a fixed camera, the scene as it unfolded in front of me. This is not a huge leap: I was once a fairly serious photographer and, as an anthropologist, I spent my professional life analyzing aspects of daily life.

Through various academic connections, I have spent a lot of time in Amsterdam over the last twenty years, and was invited as a visiting professor of the University of Amsterdam for the 2025-2026 academic year. I was able to rent an apartment right on Elandsgracht with a view onto the street. This was my opportunity, and so I began filming in the summer of 2025. The first six weeks was a lot of trial and error, but by September I had settled on an setup and began filming in earnest. While my original idea was a single shot of 7+ hours, technical and real-world issues intervened (battery life, trucks parking in front of the camera, firetrucks going by, and so on). Thus, while the film is compiled of footage from various days, I have tried to faithfully mirror a single day (morning, noon, afternoon, evening) to give an accurate sense of what the daily ebb and flow is like.

The immediate surroundings of the camera location explain much of the traffic and sound in the film. Elandsgracht is a primary artery from the west for entering the city center. At the western end of the street is the Amsterdam police headquarters, a bus station, a fire station, and a tram stop. To the east, the street ends at the Prinzengracht canal, which marks the start of the more affluent inner canal belt. The whole street is just over 500 meters along (although it continues seamlessly as Kinkerstraat to the west).

This photo shows my setup looking from the street. I filmed from the window of my first floor apartment with a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 camera (you can just make out the camera on a tripod behind the open window). The sound was recorded using a remote Rode VideoMic, which I attached to the front fork of my bike, the one with a pink basket. (Thanks to Jon Shayne and to the good folks at Westerpark Studios for helping me figure out how to capture the sound.)

Standing in the median looking straight at my apartment, to the left is a popular Albert Heijn grocery store. (It is said, in the neighborhood, to be the last independently owned Albert Heijn, and the site has been home to a grocery store for over a century.) In the film, you can see folks coming to and going from the grocery store, picking up supplies for the week or just grabbing a quick snack. The store keeps its metal racks for loading and unloading deliveries on the sidewalk in front, and you can sometimes hear the rattling of the racks in the film.

In front of the Albert Heijn are underground recycling containers for paper, cardboard, and glass. You can occasionally hear the sound of shattering glass as people discard their bottles. And in the distance (in the direction of Prinzengracht) there is a small playground—watch for children running toward it.

The underground recycling containers have sensors that signal when they are full and a truck is dispatched to empty them. The city is rolling out such underground bins for all trash, eliminating the need for trash days and decluttering the streets. Elandsgracht does not yet have these general refuse bins, and so we have trash collection twice a week—see the bags around the light pole. Spaces are so small, frequent collection is necessary, just as the Albert Heijn has to have multiple food deliveries a day to keep its shelves stocked. In the photo you can see the grocery store’s metal racks in the lower right.