I am a visual artist working with photography, video and text on long-term, documentary projects resulting in publications and installations. In my works I deconstruct the often one-dimensional representation of universal subjects revealing a multifaceted, complex reality. I'm especially interested in various, stereotypical groups with whom I can show our complicated, judgmental relationship towards the "Other". I use personal, historical and social angels to unveil and question different perspectives.
Besides initiating my own projects I regularly work as a teacher for photography (theory) and the history of photography. I have worked as a guest teacher for AKV St. Joost's BA and MA photography courses, the Willem de Kooning Academy and Syracuse University, among others.
SOY - Peanut butter, pork, skin care, tofu, pain killers, eggs, chocolate – they don’t seem to have much in common but are in fact connected: In all of these products soy has been used. Indirectly for instance in animal feed en thus in pork or eggs. Directly in products such as tofu but also as soy lecithin in pain killers or peanut butter.
In just over half a century soy has become one of the most cultivated crops worldwide and as such has enormous economic power. This versatile legume contains immense amounts of protein and is therefore used extensively in animal feed. But most people associate soy with genetic
modification, allergies or the tropical deforestation. Soy is as controversial as it is versatile.
Our knowledge of this legume is gained through images and information presented in the media, by NGO’s or often simply hearsay. The same,
ever repeating images of, for instance, the tropical deforestation are part of our collective image library. But how do the images we know
contribute to the associations we have about soy? And how does the way in which soy is depicted lead to decision-making on a personal but also governmental level?
In SOY the (photographic) representation of the soybean as well as the historical, social, political, environmental and economic layers, which are intertwined through soy will be made visible and questioned through photography, video and text.
(in matters of) Karl - In 2007 a photo album was anonymously gifted to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., its content stirring world wide media attention. The album contains more than one hundred images depicting the everyday life of Nazis working in the Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in Poland.
The album is nowadays referred to as the ‘Höcker Album’ named after its owner: Karl Friedrich Höcker.
The photographs reveal the relationships of high ranking officers and auxiliary personnel, they show the people who are depicted living a
‘normal’ life, detached from the horrendous crimes they committed.
(in matters of) Karl is a research-project about the photo album itself and the historic information shown in the images. Besides, it deals with the reproduction of images and the representation of historic images and information in archives. The different layers are held together by the story of the journey I took to realise this work and the confrontation with my own German heritage.
