I photograph to find myself, I usually do so where the ordinary opens to the the unseen. I walk (or cycle) around Amsterdam with a 35mm film camera and a digital camera, awaiting that feeling that comes through me when a stranger’s world opens, when the magic light appears, when elders carry the weight of the years, or when windows turn into stages where strangers perform in quotidianity.
Since a young age I've been the quiet, shy kid, drawn to what flickers at the edge of everyone's attention, to what others take for granted. I'd play to be a spy and observe things from the unseen, which I think translates into my approach to photography today. I want the eye to stumble awake and show people as the magical creatures they are.
My process is a walking meditation. Some days I anchor on a corner until the scene builds itself; other days I bike around, listening to music until a moment calls me over.
Fashion design trained me to reframe what is out there and to understand social interaction as a form of performance. What I’m after is presence, intimacy, observation, the second when someone becomes a story. If you pause with these pictures, I hope they feel like your perspective has shifted in some way, as if, for a breath, the ordinary let slip its hidden light and you recognized yourself inside it.