WHO?
WHAT?
WHERE?
WHEN?
WHY?
I’ve been taking pictures since my uncle gave me a Praktica TL 1000 (still have it) somewhere early in the 1980s to photograph the bands we went to see while he was recording the shows for our bootleg cassette collection. I took not very good pictures but he was a great artist and turned the images into awesome expressionist paintings. Started photographing at a steady pace, but more focus on playing in bands. Massively enjoyed shooting a wedding for friends on an Olympus MJU borrowed from my parents, filling 12 rolls with flashed pictures from the nightly party. Drifted off into mini DV video for some time. Still have many hours of footage to edit.
Things photographically got out of hand in 2013 after I read about Eggleston, Shore and Soth in the Introduction of Charlotte Cotton’s book The Photograph as Contemporary Art. Eggleston fan ever since. Began photographing everything slightly interesting. Got apprehended by the police to explain what I was doing with my camera in the middle of the polder with nothing to see but mud and water and sheet pile barns. In the end they said OK we can’t forbid but don’t scare the farmers. So kept photographing more and more frequently. Took a futuristic computational picture with my iPhone in 2012, years before it became a thing.
In 2017 read about a photography contest in the Dutch photography magazine Focus and sent in a couple of pictures. My submission got selected and I proceeded somehow up to a semifinal of some sort, winning a workshop with photographer Ahmet Polat. We had a great evening in his studio with a bite and a glass of wine; he fantasized crazy stories while reviewing my pictures, we laughed so much it hurt.
Until that time photography had been a solitary enterprise, knowing nobody with the same disorder. Explored the photographic community, visited BSPF and did a workshop in Brussels with Zisis Kardianos and Barry Talis from Burn My Eye. Barry in action is a sensation… best flash photographer in the world. Later did another workshop with Jesse Marlow and Siegfried Hansen in Berlin. Both events were great and the best thing was getting to know fellow photographers, great and unassuming people reminding me of the 80s punk and new-wave scene. One connection led to another and some ended up in deep friendships. Other highlights in my photographic career (ahem) are a publication of my Holland Upfront images in an experimental online photo magazine, a picture in Johan Idema’s book A Spectator Is An Artist Too and a photograph of a pile of shit in national Dutch newspaper NRC.
Making photos is now a continuous thing, next to more incidental drawing, collage, video, booklets, writing and other things I feel like making. So is looking at images and art in general. I know my work is all over the place but screw that I don’t like to impose any boundaries on myself and I can keep doing this forever.
