Captured
A film about seeing and being seenIn Captured, makers Arnoud Holleman and Batya Wolff show the complicated handling of photography in Batya's family. Her father Max Wolff (b. 1926) bought a camera after the war. Photography became his coping mechanism for dealing with war trauma, but while photographing, the war also remained ever-present in the home. That put a damper on the life of his daughter, who grew up in front of his lens. Can she free herself from a war that ended long before she was born?
Krijn Giezen - Lost and Found
MacGuffin Magazine #9The heap of rubble is overgrown with brambles, but with a bit of cautious climbing I make it to the top of what was once the shed. Chunks of yellow and red brick, a section of window frame, an assortment of rooftiles, a piece of lead flashing, a moss-covered chair, a dented aluminium pan – what a loss.
Platitudes
De Gids Literary MagazineEvery artisthood is teeming with platitudes. Repetitive anecdotes, topoi, that give every artist biography the same setup: he or she, always alone; real talent eludes schooling; thousands shouted out, only a handful chosen. Large or small talent, they all put their lives at stake for something that wants to transcend life. Art goes before offspring, reaches beyond death.
My Dad Playing Piano
free CDWhen my dad died we found comfort in sorting out his belongings. The closet in his study kept the usual mix of essential and trivial: drawings from high school, student paraphernalia and tons of paper work from his job as a teacher. In an old shoebox we found a microphone and some old music cassettes. When he had retired, eight years before his death, he picked up playing the piano again, took lessons and studied every day. Sometimes he would make a recording of the pieces that he played, as a reality check.
I Shot Madonna
media recyclingWhen she comes past I click away hysterically. Not even with the intention of getting her picture but I'm in the press enclosure and have to pretend that I'm a photographer. I'm so occupied with the camera and she goes by so fast that I hardly catch a glimpse of her. The print I have made is blurred. Also that night was the first time Madonna showed up with a black hairdo instead of her usual blonde, so nobody recognizes her on the photo.
Bert Luttjeboer
drawing, photo, textI was intrigued by the fact that I had to work for hours or days or weeks on end and would still fail to come anywhere close to what the camera had seen in a split second. One night, after a long day of working with minute precision and concentration, I went out to a bar and ran into Bert.
Krijn Giezen - in memoriam
Metropolis M magazineThe niche he created for himself testifies to a love-hate relationship with art, which you see reflected in the work. Art gives freedom, but it is also overcoded. In the end it’s just as effective at locking the spirit up again, with rules that can be as Kafkaesque and constraining as the excessive bureaucracy that he continually had to deal with as a landscape artist.
Herman Heijermans
drawings, photoAt the time my boyfriend was writing a biography of the Dutch playwright Herman Heijermans, who lived from 1864 to 1924. Heijermans was all over the house, in books and in pictures. I choose this one, because of how he stares into the camera. I drew two 'prints' next to the original one and framed them individually.
Susan Sontag
drawing, photo, textI've always thought of photography as something very magical and it is my belief that this is based on a genuine experience: in my early childhood there must have been no sharp distinction between a real thing and its image - in the same way that kids see themselves as inseparable from their mother until the age of three, I thought that object and image were simply two different manifestations of the same energy.
Lauren & Claudia
collage, double sidedInterview covergirl Lauren Hutton was photographed by Francesco Scavullo in 1973. She's wearing Galanos - from his exciting fall 1973 collection. Accessorized by Galanos, makeup by Way Bandy, hair by Rick Gilette. The photo was re-photographed by Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm in 2003, with model Uta Eichhorn posing as Re-Magazine covergirl Claudia. She's wearing a black dress by Hermès. Styling by Katja Rahlwes, makeup by Renata Mandic.
Re-Magazine
collaboration with Jop van BennekomRe-Magazine's great virtue is its willingness to expose sentiments that seldom find public expression, most often relating to the apparently trivial experiences and memories that make up the larger part of existence. Alongside this editorial idiosyncrasy, it is beautifully designed and photographed, each issue adopting a form to suit its subject - Emily King, Frieze, October 2003.
Driving Miss Palmen
VPRO televisionI understand why you want to be a writer. It?s better to be mediocre and famous than just being mediocre. But the difference between you and me is that I?m able to create a character of myself in a story I choose to live in. And you, I?m sorry to say, are not. That makes me a writer and you just a character in someone elses plot. And as for my work: The big misunderstanding about my work is that critics keep comparing the fictious Connie Palmen with the real Connie Palmen, instead of comparing her to other great characters in litterature, like Madame Bovary, or Lolita...
Onkenhout
galvanized bronze, textStaring at the picture of the garden on the postcard I catch a glimpse of my mother in a version of her life that she never lived, one in which Nico had gotten in touch, after that evening out. Perhaps now she'd have a different surname and be sitting by a different fire drinking wine with a different child. In a moment that feels like an oedipal short circuit, I experience something impossible: that I never existed.
Captured - How to be prepared for the past
A documentary by Batya Wolff and Arnoud HollemanIn the Netherlands, 75% of the Jewish population was killed during the Holocaust. The unique and vast photo archive of the Wolff family embodies almost one hundred years of Jewish family life - before, during and after the war. Seemingly generic family pictures unite and divide the family. For Max, first generation victim of the Nazi's, photography is a coping mechanism to deal with traumatic loss. For Batya and her two sisters, the second generation, the trauma was passed on through his lens.
Marcel
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, earth has disappeared. As we will not be able to crash, we will continue flying until we run out of fuel. Well so do something about it you?ve been wining about it for years. Well. Halfway. Everything?s fine. Stay calm. Come on guys what?s the big idea? You know, these days when somebody on the street says ?sorry? it?s a junky. You see you don?t get it. You?re just a character in someone elses plot.