"My photography deals with things that you see out of the corner of your eye, things that disappear when you look straight at them, things that pop up out of the darkness and turn out to be something else when you stare at them more closely, things you imagine to lie under your bed. I try to find the pictures that operate beneath the surface, that are behind trees, that have hidden themselves between the rocks.
My work deals with silence, with the passage of time, it deals with dreams dreamed with open eyes and invented memories.
I am looking for the doors in my head, to see what is hidden behind them.
When I told my seven year old son this, as an answer to the question what I do in my studio all the time, he replied: there´s a monster behind one of those doors and it will eat you.
Work itself is not a problem. When I am taking photographs it seems as though everything happens of its own accord, as though my body and the rest of the world are harmoniously linked together. I follow my intuition blindly. The problem is: starting the work. Where does inspiration hide when it is not there? Why is the world regularly without meaning, which makes it senseless to do anything? To get into the right mood I go for endless walks through the countryside. The city is done with. Too full of noise. The city demands action. My work begs for quietness. Nature is the projection screen for my thoughts. The city only projects itself.
I start to blossom when I put one foot in front of the other for at least a hundred kilometers. The thoughtstream finds its way back into its natural bed. Only after that can I stand calmly behind the camera and look through the lens. My prefered place for doing so is a house in Burgundy, strategically placed in France between the Loire River and the mountains of the Morvan. Purcell, Monteverdi and strong coffee help as well.
Through the window I can see the hill where my ashes are to be strewn, so everything is arranged. Nothing to worry about. To work. But why? asks a little voice in my head. Isn´t working just the same as not working in the last resort? In the last resort perhaps so.
When the sun has blown itself up and mankind is an extinct species, my work will be of no use at all. But now, at this moment, it does give me a feeling of fulfillment from time to time. Perhaps that´s strange, but that´s the way it is. Perhaps it´s an illusion, but an illusion I am not going to have taken from me. Surely we can afford one illusion in this fleeting existence? I take photographs. Therefore I am.
Fixing self-created dream worlds, that´s where the mystery lies for me. Fitting together memories, dreams and thoughts to form a fragile and magnificent building that exists only through the goodwill of light.
Conjuring art out of a piece of apparatus that functions as a magic wand as well as a machine. A form of beauty is born. Perhaps it is true that beauty has burnt her face, as a dutch poet suggested, but this has only made her more graceful. Beauty has to be mauldy, decayed, slightly dangerous. Otherwise all that is left is aesthetics. Except for the landscape the kitchen is one of the sacred spots of my soul. Nowhere the fleeting existence of life is emphasized more. Nature changes into dead food and this food serves to keep me alive. But often things that were intended to disappear into my stomach get into my photographs. An artichoke can be more moving to me than Michelangelo´s David and a carrot can be as seductive as the Botticelli Venus".
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