After being born I spent the first 19 years of my life in Leeuwarden, a small town in the North of the Netherlands. In 2005 I moved to London for love and to pursue a life in photography. While making a living as a retoucher I have consistently been working on making art with photography as the main medium. While by very proficient with photoshop I never alter any of my own work, apart from grading.

My projects usually involve people. I love involving them with a project asking them to participate somehow, usually by adding text or drawings to a portrait or image. In 2005, for Return to Sender, I sent 500 hand written letters with an image to random people all across the UK, asking for a response. For the HAIR project I asked people to have all their hair cut off and to then reflect on that. In the pandemic I photographed the neighbours in black and white to then revisit them 2 years later inside their houses, shooting them in colour now. For Take a Look at Yourself I photographed 150 people with a large plate camera over a period of 8 years. I then asked them to have a really long good look at the image, and reflect. 

The world around us is rapidly changing. As if climate change wasn’t enough, ai now seems to be threatening the way we live for good and/or bad. When I look online now I’m never really sure anymore what’s real and what not. Perhaps it’s just me because I’m getting older but I love real things. When you look at my projects and images, know that it’s all real. Everything was shot on film, nothing was altered. All the people in my images are real people, they exist(ed), live and breathe and have real thoughts and feelings.

2024 published Take a Look at Yourself, hardcover, 80 pages

2024 published Getting to Know the Neighbours, newspaper format

2024 Take a look at Yourself exhibition in Ye Olde Rose and Crown in London

2020 included in Portrait of Humanity book and exhibition

2019 included in Portrait of Humanity book and exhibition

2017 exhibition for Caña Magazine in Barcelona - selection of London nightlife photos

2017 solo exhibition of Take a Look at Yourself at St Joseph Hospice in Hackney, London

2017 inclusion in Renaissance Photography Prize at the Getty Arts Gallery in London

2017 inclusion in Portrait of Britain, advertising boards all over the United Kingdom

2014 selected for the Photographers Playbook, published by Aperture

2013 published Return to Sender, hardcover, 512 pages - shortlisted for the Aperture first photobook award in Paris

2013 published Doggies, hardcover, 30 pages

2013 exhibition at Unseen Amsterdam with Lucid-Ly

2013 exhibition at Gup gallery Amsterdam

2010 exhibition of Gumtree project at Viewfinder Gallery in Greenwich London