Brendan Benson

After show, Melkweg Amsterdam november 4th

Plan B opening Rebecca Stephany

Plan B is an independent gallery in Amsterdam run by artist Tarja Szaraniec. These pictures were taken at the opening of Rebecca Stephany for the assignment I am working on for the city archive of Amsterdam.

Obits' Rick Froberg

After their show at the Vera, Groningen on October 1st

Juergen Teller opening Lehman Maupin New York Sept. 10

W magazine

Three months after the group show 'Dutch Seen' opened in New York (I showed a part of the series 'For Art's Sake'), W magazine features a fashion story that Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin (who were also part of the show) shot in and around galleries and museums.
First picture is mine, the rest is theirs, I'll let the images speak for itselves.

Beginning of 2010 I will start finishing the project 'the Mounted Life'. With the help of the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts I will photograph the storage rooms of 16 European Natural History Museums and finish this series that I started in 2006 and photographed 13 museum for so far.

Aperture gallery in New York has a group show up called 'Nature as Artifice: New Dutch landscape in Photography and Video'. Featuring work by Hans Aarsman, Wout Berger, Marnix Goossens and many more Dutch photographers. The key picture of the show, the one they advertise this exhibition with is a picture that comes back in my own work. Edwin Zwakman's picture of two 'apartment buildings' is also featured in one of my pictures from the 'Sorry for the Mess' series (curators and museum directors offices). The original photo is up on the wall in the director of the Paviljoens office, as you can see in my image.

POP UP STORY

Tonight is the opening of the Pop Up store organized by Streetlab and ARBC, curated by Femke Dekker from MyLittleUnderground. For four days, this store located at the Chelsea market on 9th avenue and 16th street in New York and will show and sell works by various Dutch visual artists such as Parra, Shoe and the Experimental Jetset as well as clothes from designers L E W and And Beyond. I have four pictures up and for sale from the series 'After the lights go out'. Come on by, Amstel light will be complimentary served ofcourse....

Dexter's making out with Iggy

My good friend and great photographer Patricia Schimmel send me this video of her cat Dexter who's making out with a picture I took of Iggy Pop. She just had it framed.

back in 2004....

Yeah Yeah Yeah's tour with the Locust in the UK 2004...

Countess Laïla d'Ansenbourg for NRC Weekblad

the Strange Boys

Singer/ guitarplayer of the Stange Boys, Ryan Sambol at Rotown, Rotterdam July 22nd for the After the Lights go out series.

Dumpster flowers at the cemeteries of Paris

Celebration of the purchase of the Koetshuis at Museum van Loon

Last chance to go to the Designhuis in Eindhoven

June 30th Designhuis in Eindhoven will have to close its doors. Maybe they will continue under new management but nothing is sure yet. So only a few days to go to visit the beautiful exhibition 'Archeology of the Future' curated by Li Edelkoort with three images of the Mounted Life series. Here the article what went 'wrong' (in Dutch).
http://www.nrc.nl/kunst/article2278865.ece/Designhuis_in_Eindhoven_gaat_sluiten

Art crowd buffet

Dutch Seen, New York Rediscoverd at the MCNY links

The opening of the Dutch group exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York was a blast, so many friends came out that I thought I was at my own (non-existing) wedding. A lot of people took pictures and wrote something about it. I put some links up from press and bloggers.

http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2009/06/review_dutch_seen_at_museum_of_the_city_of_new_york.html

http://www.brianrose.com/journal/2009/06/new-yorkmuseum-of-city-of-ny.html

http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31353

http://www.onculture.eu/story.aspx?s_id=892&z_id=28

http://www.parool.nl/parool/nl/1184/DOSSIER-FOTOGRAFIE/article/detail/248398/2009/06/16/New-York-door-Nederlandse-ogen.dhtml (dutch)

and last, some pictures of the opening:

http://www.richardkoek.com/dutchseen2009/

Studie on people positioning themselves while looking at art in a museum part II

New York Times introduction exhibition MCNY

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/05/28/magazine/dutch-audioss/index.html?th&emc=th

I am in New York till June 12th

Exhibition NAIM Bureau Europa

The exhibition 'Stuffed' (including three images of the Mounted Life series) will be a part of the exhibition NL=Nieuwe Luxe curated by Alexander van Slobbe. At the NAIM Bureau Europa (former NAI Maastricht). Opens on the 26th of May.

Speaking of auctions:

At auction on THE photography website of the Netherlands, PhotoQ,
Two 'Untitled'- video stills of 'Shooting Stars' size 50 x 60 cm digital C Print edition 1/5.
Also check the pages before and after for more photography from Fotofestival Naarden exhibitors. You can bid until June 13th.

de Appel & Witte de With auction at Christie's May 20th

L'Officiel (NL) June issue

Shooting Stars and Holla part II

Naarden photofestival video installations

Art Amsterdam at the mayor of Amsterdam's house

This is taken at the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen's seventeenth century canalhouse. I went there to photograph this social gathering of gallerists who have a booth at the Art Amsterdam fair that is going on this week. It looks like times stood still........

'SHOOTING STARS'

Premiering at the Naarden Photofestival May 15th is a new videoinstallation Shooting Stars. For some time now I have been filming red carpet photographers in New York (aka 'the paparazzi'). Nine 'moving' portraits of men that all show similar behavior. They all have a nervous energy and their eyes are on the hunt...
A nice trivial is that I got into a lot of fights during the making of, confused a lot of people and have been threatened to get sued if I would use their image. But who am I anyway?!!
Also shown will be the 'Holla' video that I shot in 2006 in Miami Beach during Spring Break.

Andy Moore from the Ex for june issue WIRE

Holy Fuck

For 'After the Lights go out', Holy Fuck's drummer Matt Schultz after their Melkweg show of April 21st.

Exhibition 'Archeology of the future'

Handpicked by trendwatching queen Li Edelkoort are three images from 'the Mounted Life' series. Two of these images are new and never shown before. Opening March 26 at the Designhouse in Eindhoven.

Studie on people positioning themselves while looking at art in a museum

Dear book, please help me!

Working on something new here.....and who else then Strand bookstore can help me out with this?!

New York New York New York New York

So as the word is slowly coming out, I will write a bit about why I am in New York now. On June 10th there will be opening an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York called 'Dutch Seen'. Holland discovered New York 400 years ago, and because of that some marketeers came up with 'the Hudson Year'. A year full of activities concerning the Dutch link with New York. So, to make a long story short. FOAM and the MCNY are setting up two huge photography exhibitions, one in Amsterdam where New York photographers take their view on Amsterdam and one in New York where Dutch photographers show their view on New York, or at least one little asset of it. I've been invited by curator Kathy Ryan (from the New York Times magazine) to show 'For Art's Sake' a series that I graduated with, and still from time to time continue shooting for. It's about art gallery openings in New York, mainly in Chelsea. It is the most alienating place to go to, free alcohol, art and a bunch of nice looking people all holding up an act. I torture myself going to these places but also enjoy the hell out of it, I guess I have that with everything I shoot and do.
It is a great honor to be in a groupshow with Hollands finest photographers (more about that later) and have a show in New York! I will be in New York till the 10th of April to work on new photos for this series and will attend a lot of openings the upcoming weeks.
Also I am working on a video installation for the Naarden photofestival that will start in May. For the last year I have been going to moviepremieres and parties and shoot the paparazzi on video. This will be beamed in a big church on various screens, together with the short video 'Holla' taken in Miami during Black Spring Break.

Galerie Inkijk

If you are in Amsterdam, going to the Paradiso or Balie or whatever, somewhere in between there is a window gallery called 'Inkijk', (next to the bike rental shop) I have a selection of the series 'After the Lights go out' up there for view. I created sort of a teenage wall with 'posters', not with good looking popstars but with sweatty, tired under- and some upper ground heroes...on view till April 30th.

OOG in OOG exhibition

Stichting Kop in Breda is organizing an exhibition where 29 painters and photographers show in their own way, how they deal with taking/ making someones portrait. People like Anton Corbijn, Celine van Balen, Ruud van Empel en Willum Geerts to name a few have their work on display so if you are around, (I know, Breda..., but if you are in a radius of about a 100 km please go). I have a picture printed from the 'After the Lights go out' series on exactly 100 centimeters high for this, so expect to see some open pores and visible sweat drops...Opens on the 6th of March untill the 26th of April.

Dead Darlings Auction

On Saturday the 21st of February there will be an anonymous auction of work by 66 artists in the Mediametic on the Vijzelstraat in Amsterdam. The theme is Dead Darlings and are mostly works that lost a bit of relevance to the final work of the artists. The list of people who are in it is great and the work they handed in a little a-typical because the artists are kept secret until the auction is over. Most likely you will be able to score something amazing for bottom prices! Come by and bring lots of cash.
Oh and I am in it too......

Photo Miami

I am not really a photographer who takes 'funny' pictures but I could not just let this pass me by. A couple of months ago I was in Miami taking pictures and filming at the Art Fairs there. I also went to Photo Miami, not really drawn by anything I just walked around four times and was about to leave. Within five minutes apart from each other these two scenes happened. Two 'typical' guys were taking pictures of some pornstar's boobs (photo's by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders) and a two year old who was fixated on some woman's labia (a picture by Chin Chin Wu), her mom was so embarrassed.

Terry & Obama

Found this picture on the internet somewhere, thought it was pretty good. Obama looks so stoked and happy to go on a picture with Terry, it looks they know something we don't.

Aspect Ratio

Today I went over to Tent to photograph the exhibition 'Aspect Ratio', not knowing what it was about, I was very surprised to find out it's an exhibition inspired by the movie I saw yesterday 'the Power of Ten' (clearly I did not pay much attention to what is going on at the festival....).
There were a couple of great installations to see made by artists like Louis De Cordier (that's the metal object you see in the picture above here) and there is a mirror installation made by Morgan Fisher that have a direct connection with the machinary of film. It contains of a series of mirrors that have the measures of the different ratios of film, from silent movies to Ultra Panavision. Fisher's work is influenced by Sol LeWitt and Marchel Duchamp and Susan Sontag. The exhibition is up till March 8th.

Powers of Ten

I am halfway trough the Filmfestival in Rotterdam, making 12 to 14 hour days photographing for the daily festival paper, I managed to see a couple of movies too. There are several programmes and one of them is Size Matters. From nanotechnological close-ups to cosmic views, Size Matters (if you click on the link, see Jeroen Jongeleen's movie on the opening page, it is really cool!) investigates how the visual arts and sciences enter into a dialogue on the main issue: people as the measure in an expanding technological universe. Anyway, I went to the biggest screen of the festival Pathe 1 (24 meters!) which showed a bunch of movies that are in the programme and were a bit too much for my taste but I was really happy to see 'Powers of 10' coming by, a movie made by the great Charles and Ray Eames. It is the most amazing journey you will ever make from a picknickplaid to the end of the Universe and back in just 9 minutes. Please Please register on the site and see it, it will blow you away! (not as much if you see it from a computer as from a 24 meter screen).

Hands Off......

For quite some time now I have been interested in female hands, not all of them, for sure not mine.. Preferbly older, manicured, well to do female hands with loads of gold and diamonds attached to it. At Art Basel Miami I started to film these hands because, simply, I was surrounded by them. I am editing at the moment and it might take a while before this projects sees the daylight but I wanted to give a preview with some videostills.

I AM BACK IN AMSTERDAM! FYI

Night Marchers - Obits

I just got back from a show at Santos Party House on Lafayette street where I saw the Night Marchers and Obits play. It made me wanted to post this picture that I took a couple of months ago after the Night Marchers played their show in Rotterdam. Now I can go to sleep (it is 1 AM)......

Miami Beach - NYC

Today I am going back to New York after spending a week in Miami Beach for all the Art Fairs. I must say, even though I had been here before, this was a rough one. The weather was great but somehow I didn't seem to fit in too much this time. The high doses of Ed Hardy t shirts and gold 'fuck me shoes' had something to do with it too. Luckily I ran into the Experimental Jetset who where here for a Wim Crouwel show at the Wolfsonian museum. The ArtBasel/ Miami was 'fantastic' according to some people and 'weak' according to others, I really don't have an opinion about it because I was busy photographing people at their booths in positions that are a little off. I was happy to see Jay Z and Beyonce shopping for something above their couch though.

31 Corn Lane

My friends the Sperber sisters (the same I celebrated Thanksgiving with and have been photographing for years) run a bag company called 31 Corn Lane. Matt Owens, who is Amy's husband and the master in about everything you do on a computer just designed a new website for them, Amy asked me if I wanted to take the pictures for the new line and we had fun doing so, freezing cold with a French model she picked out from the internet, no go sees here.

Thanksgiving

For the 4th year in a row I have been celebrating Thanksgiving with my 'surrogate' family, the Sperber family. I have been photographing the twins (out of four sisters) for a while now and their elderly home in suburban New Jersey looks just like I've seen it in 'the movies'. Every year Terry Sperber (who does a terrific job) sets two tables for about 16 people who will stuff their mouths for a couple of hours. Here are some samples of the food, one is with ofcourse Turkey and the other one (or actually two, which are mine) is the vegan course.

PS1-Børre Saethre

This installation by Børre Saethre can be seen at the PS1 in Queens. A lot of artists make art with taxidermy (as can be seen at the online magazine Antennae which I am featured in this month) but this particular piece striked me, also because it is not really about the taxidermy. I won't go philosophical on you but it is beautiful. If you walk in the window in front of the 'unicorn' is transparant but as you move towards it, the unicorn will dissapear behind the misty window. Somehow there is some stuff on the glass that makes this effect (the Issey Miyake store in Soho, NY has the same kind of technique on the shop windows).

Window shopping

Some sketches for possible new work. I love looking through shop windows, especially fancy shoe stores. If you know some, tips are welcome!

Old stuff

I know two kinds of people who know my work. People who know my work from after 2004/5 and people who know my work from before 2005. For those who are not familiar with the old work, I'd like to give you a sneak preview. From 1999 till 2005 I went on tour with a bunch of (independent) 'rock' bands. I've never done anything with these images, they are just sitting in my computer and in negative holders. I've traveled all over the world and have thousands of images. One day I will get to it but for now, a 'legendary' At the Drive in shot taken in Australia, getting of a plane for the Big Day Out festival and in a hotelroom in Japan.

Duane Michals vs Color Space Imaging

The best photolab in the whole world would be CSI in New York City, a small lab run by Ben Diep specialized in exhibiton printing and photoshop. One of it's customers is mr Duane Michals not an unknown man in the photography world. When mr Michals comes in and he has to wait for a bit, he streches down on a table and takes a little powernap. What a strange sight.

Election night

Yes, I know it is a little late but I shoot on film remember, that takes time.
This is how I spend my night, watching the counts at the Sperber/ Owens residency
in Brooklyn. Niels rocking an Obama shirt, Dave rocking a bottle of Vodka, Amy rocking a couple of dogs and Matt's on the floor overseeing everything.

Best picture ever

I came across this picture during research on new museums that I want to approach for the Mounted Life series. It is really the best thing I have ever seen. It's taken in 1969 and it looks like a Jeff Wall or Teun Hocks picture. So surreal!

New York, New York

Arrived well in New York and will be in line super early tomorrow with my friends the Sperber sisters and their spouses to VOTE (well, not me I will take pictures of this historic happening). I know who they are voting for, and probably threequarters of New York will. Fingers crossed!

Robin Thicke

Today, Dutch newspaper NRC Next will feature an article about the singer/ songwriter Robin Thicke (and son of Alan Thicke, the dad from Growing Pains). I was informed before that I only had five minutes, eventually it was a little less then three. I very much like the result though. The contrast between the background and Robin Thicke couldn't be bigger. I've been very much into that AMC series Mad Men lately and he reminded me a little of the characters on the show.....

Ag magazine # 53

The autumn issue of Ag, the international journal of photographic art & practice featured the Mounted Life in their heading 'Scene Around'. This issue also has a big feature on Josef Koudelka's book 'Invasion Prague 1968' and a book review that cought my attention, 'the Last Things' by David Moore. This book shows images of an underground crisis management command centre somewhere beneath London. This is a highly secret world but through the manager of the art collection at the Ministry of Defence, Moore got access to this secret place.

Picture of the Day

IHEARTPHOTOGRAPH

The iheartphograph blog has been a great supporter of my work in the past. When I checked my visitor stats today I found out that I had an unusual high number of hits and saw that my latest series 'Sorry for the Mess' is featured on this really great photoblog.
Always good to find out on a rainy sunday afternoon..... Thanks Laurel!

ANTHEM magazine

I am featured in this months issue of Anthem magazine thanks to Dutch Editor at Large Femke Dekker. Pick it up at Atheneum in Amsterdam or anywhere in the US. It is the premiere publication of 'After the Lights go out....'
So far I have photographed about 30 musicians for this project and will put out a book once I have photographed everybody that's on my wishlist.

Wanted: New York area Museum Curators and Directors who open up their office for me.

Through November and December I will be in New York and at the Art Miami fair. During that time I will be working on my ongoing projects, one of them 'Sorry for the Mess' a series about museum employees offices (curators and directors). The only problem is that it is hard to get in without an introduction. So anybody who knows somebody who knows anybody that is working at a museum in New York or anywhere close to the bordering states, and will be able to introduce me, let me know! The Miami Art Museum thought it is an 'interesting project' and will open their doors for me.

Stuffed, Strijp-S Eindhoven

There is an amazing group show called 'Stuffed' going on at the 2nd floor of the Strijp-S in Eindhoven (Klokgebouw). Inspired by the collection of the Environmental Centre in Eindhoven
twelve artists made new work and some outside people like me where invited to show excisting work. I have five photo's from the Mounted Life series up for view. Hope you can make it, it is only till the 26th of October.

I AM A BLOGGER

Hi,

From today on I will keep a blog because I am really slow in keeping my website updated. This blog will be regularly updated until I am fed up with it. This blog is for people who are interested in my work, what I am doing and what I like. Also I will occasionally ask for help. Because the projects that I work on require a lot of research I can use all the help!