The Curator Mag interview

“Portraying the Untranslatable and a Different Post Colonialism” is the title of Anandita Thakur’s interview with yours truly! The editor of The Curator Mag from India asked me some questions about working as a photographer in Africa. It’s interesting to see that she chose to focus on the aspect of me being a white, western photographer in a post colonial region.

I’m humbled by Anandita’s words, as she describes the moments captured in my photographs “touched with a certain porous, all-encompassing purity, so incidental that they are never addressed in conversations but also marked by a self-sustained fullness”.

If you’d like to read the whole interview, you can click on this link.

Buy the 'Streets Of' Collection by MENDO & teNeues

As you might’ve seen on the ‘Books’ tab of this website, I’ve worked on several ‘Streets Of’ books for the photo book creators of MENDO and German publisher teNeues! I was responsible for the editorial coordination of Streets of Paris, Streets of Amsterdam and Streets of New York, which means that I have selected all photographers and the photos they have taken. I also wrote the foreword, the captions and the interviews with four selected photographers.

You can now get your hands on all four books at once, by checking out this product page on the award-winning web store of MENDO! By buying the whole collection at once, you’ll get one book for free. Check out this link to find out more. Here you can read more about the books I worked on for MENDO, and the photo books that boast my pictures.

Out now: New Dutch Photography Talent 2019, the book

Happy 2019! This whole year, I’ll be one of Nikon & GUP Magazine’s ‘New Dutch Photography Talents’! The photo exhibition at Melkweg Amsterdam has unfortunately come to an end, but the pictures of all talents are still visible in the recently published photo book ‘NEW 2019’! You can get your hands on a copy at the online web store of GUP Magazine.

“NEW 2019 is the 8th title in the New Dutch Photography Talent series, produced by GUP Magazine. NEW is a book, but functions as a catalogue, a style-guide annually featuring the best 100 emerging photographers from The Netherlands. NEW is a production of GUP Magazine and is powered by Nikon. It is a platform bringing Dutch-based photography talents to the attention of galleries, museums, commercial and photography agencies, media companies and institutions that work with imagery. With its 420 pages it is a Bible to art directors, curators, collectors, photography lovers, and fellow photographers. NEW makes sure emerging photographers get the attention and platform they deserve.”

Here you can read more about the books I worked on for the photo book creators at MENDO and the photo books that boast my pictures, like ‘Depart’ and ‘They Call It Africa, We Call It Home’.

Like my page on Facebook!

Happy 2019, and thanks a lot for reading my blogs! If you’d like to find out some more about what I’m doing in East Africa, you can now also follow me on Facebook. By liking this page, any update will automatically find its way into your feed. See you there!

Jetzt verfügbar: Depart!

Depart, one of the first books I worked on for MENDO, is now available in Germany! I love how the book makes the leap from the online medium of Instagram, to the offline world of photo books. The wanderlust-inducing book boasts over 25 talented, young and ‘new’ photographers, that offer a new perspective on contemporary photography.

For ‘Depart’, which is published in Germany by the renowned publishing house Dumont, I’m responsible for every word that’s in the book, including the introduction text. There is also an eight page chapter in Depart, that features photos I took on a trip to Israel, Jordan and Palestine.

To buy the German edition of Depart, you can visit the Dumont Reise Webshop. The international edition of the book is on sale at MENDO. A while back, Hypebeast featured Depart on their website - click here to read the piece!

Check out the ‘Books’ tab of this website to read more about the books I made for MENDO.

New Dutch Photography Exhibition at Melkweg Amsterdam

As a New Dutch Photography Talent, I’m very proud to share that my work is on display at the legendary music venue ‘De Melkweg’ in Amsterdam! Together with the other ‘New Dutch’ talents, my work is beautifully printed by Fotolab Kiekie and exhibited at the ‘EXPO’ part of De Melkweg. Browse through the pictures above (from left to right) to see more of the exhibition.

Read more about the New Dutch Photography project, set up by GUP Magazine & Nikon, in my previous blogpost.

New pictures published in NRC, Trouw and NPO Radio 1

I couldn’t be more proud of Saskia, who has won a prestigious Dutch award for talented journalists, the ‘Philip Bloemendal Prijs’! The jurors praised her ability to convey difficult stories through “clear texts and powerful imagery”. Saskia works as an Africa correspondent for Dutch media, like TV broadcaster RTL Nieuws, radio program Bureau Buitenland and newspaper Trouw. To read the whole jury report, click here! To check out her great appearance in TV show RTL Late Night, click here.

Last month, my pictures of my girlfriend Saskia and another Dutch Saskia, writer Saskia Noort, were published in several online / print media. Radio station NPO Radio 1 and newspapers NRC Handelsblad and Trouw published my portrait of Saskia Houttuin, which was also included in several press statements. Some of my photographs of Saskia Noort’s trip to Tanzania were shown in this NPO Radio 1 video segment and were used by De Nieuws BV and NPO online.

Photo blog takeover: Hatje Cantz

In the month of November, I took over the photo blog of German book publisher Hatje Cantz! The international publishing house is specialised in photography, art, architecture and design books. On invitation of Nadine Barth, Hatje Cantz’s Consulting Editor for photography art books, I wrote several blogs about photography-related issues. You can check out the blog to read features of talented (African) photographers like Sam Vox, Fredrik Lerneryd, Prince Gyasi, Yagazie Emezi and Brian Otieno. Other blogs are focussed on model consent forms, the New Dutch Photography Talent project and the Eye for All Auction!

Buy one of my photos at the Eye For All photo auction

In less than three days, auction site catawiki.com and NGO WarChild will set up a photo auction, called ‘Eye For All’. From 9 to 16 November, you'll be able to get your hands on fine art prints of “some of the best photographers of The Netherlands”. I’ve also been asked to donate a picture!

All yields will go to WarChild's 'Safe Spaces' project, which creates safe environments where children can process their negative experience, often caused by war. Children who haven't gone to school for a longer period of time, are getting further training, focused on catching up and entering the regular education system again.

The Eye for All photo auction is an initiative of Annet de Graaf, commissioned by Catawiki. For this project, Annet approached 75 Dutch photographers, such as Kadir van Lohuizen, Elspeth Diederix, Corbino, Nick van Tiem, Eddy van Wessel, Raymond Rutting, Jimmy Nelson and Brooks Kraft. She also asked me to donate one of my pictures (see below), which will also be for sale - the starting price for this print will be 250 euros.

To find out more about the photo auction, check out this Facebook page, this WarChild web page or the event page of venue Melkweg Amsterdam. For more of the photography that’ll be on sale, check out my blog at the Hatje Cantz Fotoblog!

Cover image of Msafiri Magazine

The cover of this month’s edition of Kenya Airways inflight magazine Msafiri boasts one of my pictures! On the photo I took in the Masai Mara, a coalition of cheetahs rests under an acacia tree. Inside the magazine, there’s some more of my photography of the Masai Mara and New York City. The cover picture is also right next to an introduction by Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta. I’m very proud to have my pictures published alongside photos of renowned photographers like Michael Poliza and Philip Lee Harvey!

I’ve also written a lot of texts for this edition of the magazine, like a Q&A with Nnedi Okorafor (author of Who Fears Death, which will be turned into a very cool HBO series by George R.R. Martin) about her Black Panther comic Shuri and an interview with Tshidi Manye, who has been playing the Lion King role of Rafiki for over 17 years on Broadway. You can read all that and more via these (1) two (2) links.

To read more about the travel story about Ethiopia I have written earlier for Msafiri, check out my earlier blogpost.

Kenya Airways magazine Msafiri: read my Ethiopia travel story

For their inflight magazine Msafiri, airliner Kenya Airways asked me to write a travel story about our trip to the Ethiopian Amhara region, where Saskia and I traveled not only to the country’s capital, Addis Ababa, but also the world-famous monolithic churches of Lalibela, the impressive castles of Gondar and the laidback Lake Tana town of Bahir Dar. You can read the ten pages with my photography (i.a.) above, or download the whole PDF of Msafiri Magazine here (also check out the photo book feature of my photo book Streets of New York, on page 69!).

I'm a New Dutch Photography Talent!

GUP Magazine selected my photography work for the 2019 edition of their New Dutch Photography Talent book! Every year, the magazine publishes a photo book annex catalogue that “celebrates the best emerging Dutch photography talents of the year”. The hardcover publication will be launched later this year and is launched simultaneously with a big exhibition showcasing the work of all selected photographers.

The book, which will contain four of my pictures, has a print run of 3.000 copies and will be globally distributed to galleries, museums, commercial and photography agencies, media companies and institutions that work with imagery. The awe-inspiring collection of pictures is selected by a jury consisting of Roy Kahmann and Willemijn van der Zwaan of Kahmann Gallery, photographer Bastiaan Woudt and the GUP magazine team.

You can get your hands on the book later this year via the GUP magazine store, or check out the 2018 version via this link.

Jimmy Nelson on 'Before They Pass Away 2': 'Homage to Humanity'

For MENDO’s Journal, I extensively interviewed Jimmy Nelson! The renowned photographer and I chatted about his new book, which is the sequel to bestseller ‘Before They Pass Away’. For ‘Homage to Humanity’, Jimmy ventured to new, harder to get to places, to portray people from all kinds of different culture groups.

We also talked about the criticism he received on his first book, and how the Jimmy Nelson Foundation fits in the bigger goal behind his work. For the aforementioned foundation, Jimmy travelled to Kenya with the other company I worked for, Charlie’s Travels. You can read the interview, and the travelogue Jimmy wrote about his Charlie’s Travels trip, through the link below.