A photograph should have the ability
to communicate the sense of humanity,
especially if it's a picture of a person
And it should have an internal narrative
that allows you to walk away
with a question or two in your mind
And I think that those are the criteria
that I use for my work
When I made the picture "Jasmijn, To The Light"--
one of the things that I use in my work
is the idea of collective photographic memory
It's the idea that a picture can be understood
on lots of different levels of memory,
particularly photographic memory
And the picture that I chose
or emerged with that picture
was the absolutely iconic image of Anne Frank
that you see on books that kids read at school
and adults read
to remind themselves of certain things
I make that picture with that image--
that little fleeting photograph--
in mind, the picture of a girl that never grew up
and trying to make her grow up in the photograph
The piece was made in this studio
and I've been photographing
using a camera-obscura technique
for, I suppose, two or three years
It seems like a very natural way of working to me
and I think that I was always interested
in other ways of making pictures
But I made this camera
The way it works
is I will position the person in front of the camera
And then, I'll go inside the camera
to make refinements to that position
I'll close the lens down
Then, you'd put up some light-sensitive material
in the back of the camera
Then, you come out of the camera
and open the lens
and make the exposure, using flash
And then, you'd put the picture
into a processing machine,
which takes 18 minutes for it to dry
So the picture's either done and great
or awful and terrible in 18 minutes
They're different to other photographs
Because they emit a sensation
that is a little more human somehow
They're never really described as prints
Because the print is the photograph,
and the photograph is the print
There's not the opportunity
to make more than one version of the picture
Because that moment has passed
There's no negative
And there's no transparency
There's no digital file
The pictures that I make,
they're 50 by 70 inches or 50 by 60 inches
I wanted a photograph
to be an experience to look at
And I'd look at photographs
and I'd walk up to the pictures,
and I'd find them disappointing
Because they break up
And they become pixelated
or grain-laden at a certain viewing distance
And I thought there was a way around that--
the opportunity to be millimeters away
from the surface of the pictures
and see the texture of people's skin
and the bits of makeup they were wearing yesterday
and couldn't wash off
and eyelashes
and dust on the surface of fabrics
and things like that
I'm very interested in the history of photography
But I'm more interested in general visual culture
I pick from lots of different things
to find my excitement or my inspiration
I think that there's undoubtedly a photographic lineage
where I'm the end of it in some parts
and the beginning of it for others