"North European light is precious. Meditterranean artists are surrounded by it and take it for granted, but northern artists like Vermeer take infinite care with the small amounts filtering through thick glass windows or, like Edward Munch, celebrate the half light of late midsummer evenings. This photograph of four girls beside a beach hut in Holland reminds me of Munch's painting "Girls on a jetty", with a similair composition and the same diagonal perspective. In the painting, the girls are staring at some invisible presence in the water. The future? Adolescence? They seem to be in awe of it, or mesmerized. The balance of poet has shifted in the last 100 years. The four Dutch girls are not in awe of anything ( although slightly less assured from left to right). It is not a hot day but the are not deterred by the cold, nor fazed by the photographer. They are staring at a very different future, perhaps aware that the adults they will become will one day be looking at the photograph. They are already acting out their future roles and it is easy to imagine them in five, 10 or 15 years time. The light is classic North European, a white rather than grey day with a blanket of clouds casting very soft shadows. The girl's clothes are almost the only colour against the pale sand and the black and white beach huts. Buy you cannot look at them for long. Your eye is inevitably led elsewhere. Who, or what, is the silhouette waiting in the shed?" - Ben Mallalieu, Travel Writer, The Guardian
Dutch Beach
Portraits of adults and children who during the summer voluntarily stay in self made wooden cottages by the sea. Intrigued by their way of living, I strongly feld that this community was like a small town which had moved to the shore.
Wijk aan Zee
Portretten van volwassenen en kinderen die gedurende de zomermaanden vrijwillig verblijven in zelf getimmerde huisjes aan zee. Geintrigeerd door hun manier van leven, kreeg ik sterk het gevoel dat deze woongemeenschap een dorp was dat naar de zee was verhuisd.