ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Artist Statement

The story began in April 2019 when I met the Portugese photographer Paulo Nozolino in a workshop in Arles, France. The title was : « Jusqu'à l 'os », which means « Down to the bone ». The theme appealed to me since my aim in photography is to reveal another reality within the reality surrounding us. As a matter of fact on that moment my project « Dancing in the Emptiness » has been born. It should be a series of 4 frame collages. The first four pictures have been exhibited during the annual photo festival « Les Rencontres de la photographie » in Arles. Afterwards my work deepened : I wanted to go further than « down to the bone » and arrive at the core of human being, even furhter than personality which is constructed after birth. My question : what has been man before birth, or after death ? Hence sprang the title « Dancing in the emptiness ». This emptiness, following me, is not void, but awareness and love. During a whole year I worked on the theme, resulting into 21 collages. I got involved in a process in which I tried to avoid all superfluous information. It came as a big surprise that I discovered the talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, whose book « I Am That » is the best known. « Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment ».
His talks motivated me and were a great help in the composition and storytelling of the project.
All pictures have been taken on a Leica M9 Monochrom camera.

AUTHOR
Growing old I feel as a great pleasure. It helps to be more open to the world, with less prejudices and even more discoveries. However I did not become a saint. Born in Rotterdam during wartime in 1942. In my memory pictures of German soldiers marching on the bridge in front of our house. A German guard on a wooden stool in a tree of our garden behind the house. This formed the basis for the way I looked later to the world, especially in regard to the authorities.
In my youth I made a short movie about suffering around the statue of Zadkine in the center of the bombed city of Rotterdam. Zadkine reduces the figures to their most concise and telling form.
Since that time my photo works focus on the essential of what I see.
At young age I have been awarded for photocontests. After a careeer as journalist modern art, and later as socio-economical and political affairs as editor of a leading daily newspaper, I moved to the French province Ardèche, where I could freely enjoy the photography with many exhibitions in France, and some in Holland and Switzerland. Meanwhile I have been rewarded several times by the Tokyo International Foto Awards, and other rewards by Neutral Density Photo Awards and Minimalist Photo Awards.

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