India
I’m excited to announce that one of my photo series shot in Plateau State, Nigeria, will be shown on the 3rd edition of the Polyphony International Photo Festival. The annual photography festival is organized by the Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira’s Belur Math-a College. Eight of my photographs will be exhibited on the banks of the holy river Ganges, early February.
To find out more about the festival, check out their Facebook page or check out this video.
You might’ve noticed that there’s a new tab on my website, called ‘Countries’! On this page, I have highlighted some of my favorite pictures taken in several countries. I’m very active on Instagram, but due to that activity, most of my pictures are buried under new content and so it can take some scrolls before you’ll see them. On the new ‘Countries’ page, you can now also see older work.
Some of the featured countries are Iran, Senegal, Mali, Uganda, India and Kenya.
Check out the ‘Countries’ page here.
“Portraying the Untranslatable and a Different Post Colonialism” is the title of Anandita Thakur’s interview with yours truly! The editor of The Curator Mag from India asked me some questions about working as a photographer in Africa. It’s interesting to see that she chose to focus on the aspect of me being a white, western photographer in a post colonial region.
I’m humbled by Anandita’s words, as she describes the moments captured in my photographs “touched with a certain porous, all-encompassing purity, so incidental that they are never addressed in conversations but also marked by a self-sustained fullness”.
If you’d like to read the whole interview, you can click on this link.
Suleyman Azhari of online platform 'Dion Ys Us' asked me to put some thoughts on paper about my recent trip to India. These words, alongside a selection of the pictures I took in the country, have been published on his page - click here to check it out!
You'll find more features, collaborations and assignments on the 'Features' page.
I entered the 2017 edition of LensCulture’s Portrait Awards, and submitted six pictures I took in India and Ivory Coast, last year. Each year, a group of photography experts are selecting the best portraits from all over the world. The 2017 jury members were Susan White (Vanity Fair), Philip Prodger (National Portrait Gallery), photographer Todd Hido, Jennifer Pastore (The Wall Street Journal Magazine), Whitney Johnson (National Geographic), Fiona Rogers (Magnum Photos), Genevieve Fussell (The New Yorker) and Jim Casper (LensCulture).
Although my pictures didn't make it to the final round, I received some interesting feedback on my submission, which I think is really helpful for any aspiring photographer like me - so I shared the full review below. If you have any thoughts on my pictures as well, do let me know!
Joost, you have submitted a dynamic group of single images for the review. I can see through your work and biography that you are very committed to developing your vision and photographic language. It is wonderful to see how photography inspired you to explore the world around you and engage with different communities. It is very helpful to the work that you included short caption information to support each image. Your audience may appreciate learning just a little more about each scene and the captions add depth to the story.
Let's discuss your photographs. Image #5, highlights your strength in using color and composition to hold your viewer's attention. The subjects in the foreground act as a strong visual device in contrast to patterned textile on the ground. I wonder if you could have eliminated some of the additional brighter information on the right side of the frame? Regardless, this image is by far your most sophisticated photograph. Your use of the repeating lines through the carpet worked very well. In image #6, the closer focal length invited me to look longer and engage with your subject. I was moved by the intensity of the eye contact and expression from your young subject. Image #1 is striking in your use of light but I find myself wanting to move past this image. The frame feels less formally aware when compared to your strongest images. There did not seem to be enough engagement from the main subject which led me to move past this image more quickly In image #3, you captured movement and the woman's gaze was very important to the success of this image. It was the sharpest aspect of the shot and felt just right. The energy and movement captured in image #2 was exciting but this frame was also very well organized visually.
There is very strong travel photography that I am sure you have seen featured in publications like National Geographic. I would also encourage you to articulate and identify elements that specific photographers are doing in these features. Oftentimes, travel photographers will be hired for a specific style, whether it be their use of color and framing or something entirely different.
You have a lot of strengths in your work, specifically, attention to light, color and expression which combine to make some dynamic portraits. I think you have done a fine job at articulating your voice in the form of environmental portraiture. Your submission begins to introduce your voice as a photographer interested in people and travel. I would encourage you to reflect on what allows your favorite photographers to differentiate themselves from the many types of images that we see. Two photographers, that come to mind that have completed unique work abroad are Steve McCurry and Raghubir Singh? I think you would find their work inspiring.
Thank you for sharing your photography and best of luck with your work. Please see the additional resources that I included below to help support your goals.
When The Guardian put ‘Depart’ high on their ‘Top 10 Travel Books for Christmas’ list, more and more people learned about the photo book we made. Some of those people work at Great Britain’s biggest independent travel magazine Escapism Magazine, a monthly publication (with a circulation of 100,600) that goes out across London once a month.
They’ve asked me to take over their Instagram account, so make sure to check out their feed on the following couple of days! Pictures I took in India will also appear in their newsletter and the March issue of Escapism Magazine - so if you're in London in March, grab me a copy okay?!
Although I didn't really switch jobs, I did exchange employers on the first of July, 2016. After six years of working at BNNVARA, I'm now on the payroll of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (NPO). I still had some BNNVARA vacation days left that I couldn't take with me to the NPO, so I decided to plan a trip to India. A very short trip, because I was only there for seven days.
During that intense trip to New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur I took a lot of pictures - a selection of them can be seen on my Instagram profile. Kerol Izwan from the Malaysian magazine Musotrees and Suleyman Azhari from the American website Dion Ys Us liked my pictures so much that they wanted to share them with their audiences. I took over the Musotrees Instagram account for a couple of days, and a selection of the pictures I took in India will be online on the Dion Ys Us website soon. Check it out!
