I
was born in Venlo, the Netherlands, in 1952.
At the age of 31 I went to the Academy of Arts in Tilburg, a small university
town in the south of Holland. I got an education as a sculptor, but mostly
work as a photographer.
A great part of my photographical work of the past 25 years was realized
in Mexico, which over the years has become more or less my second homeland.
Almost every year I visit Alto Lucero, a small village near the town of
Veracruz. A lot of inhabitants - the greater part are peasants - are friends
of mine. Two years ago I photographed them in front of their houses together
with their image of the Virgen de Guadelupe (the Mexican equivalent of
the Holy Virgen) for an art project in Holland. The name of the project
was Calle de la Virgen, or (because all people live in the same street)
Street of the Holy Virgen. Some pictures from this project you can see
on www.zonezero.com/magazine/vgpe/theo_hol/fotos.html.
Over the years more and more people in their own dignity have become the
central theme in my work.
Next spring (2004)I will return for six months to Latin America to do
some documentary work in Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Statement
When
I was in Mexico in july 2003 I went to Guatemala to make some photographs
for the website of two dutch friends who started two years ago some social
and educational projects in Antigua, the former capital of Spanish America.
One of the projects deals with a group of homeless people who every night
are getting together under the arcade of a file of shops in a street called
Alameda, next to the market. A lot of them suffer from diseases, there
is alcoholism, some are sniffing glue or/and using drugs. Some are prostitutes
as well. Three times a week, the two women from Holland visit this people
tot give them food and - if necessary - clothings. At the moment they
are busy building a shelter out of stone, where the homeless can come
and go during the whole day.
Ana-Maria Ackerman and Carla Nolte (the two women) brought me into contact
with this people. They have a good relationship with the homeless. Because
I was a friend of the two the homeless gave me permission to make the
photographs, also the times when I visited them in my own.
Life at the limits - Homeless in Guatemala shows an other side
of Guatemala, not the Guatemala we know from the publications of the travel
agencies: laughing Indians in handwoven colourfull costumes. You should
know that for a great part of the year Antigua is overcrowded by tourists
from all over the world, who come to visit the old convents, climbing
the volcanoes and buy souvenirs from that colourfull dressed people in
the park, without realizing how poor a great part of the population of
Guatemala is, without realizing that poverty is just some blocks away.
Guatemalan government doesn't do very much to give most of the people
good education, health care, a good economical base. They don't even give
their own people a future.
A lot of mostly foreign organization are trying to give the Guatemaltecas
a better life.
Among them is the organization of the dutch women: www.stichtinglosninos.nl
All photos
were made with the night shot of the digital camera, so it was not necessary
to use a flash. By using the night shot, there is a shifting of colours:
with some pictures it works, sometimes it doesn't work. For that reason
I changed all iimages into black and white. I also used the "dark
room techniques" of changing density and contrast.
I
was born in Venlo, the Netherlands, in 1952.
