Hi, my name is Ilvy Njiokiktjen, I'm a photojournalist based in the Netherlands and I'm
a proud Canon Ambassador. I love working on long term stories and on assignments, and the best is
actually to have a combination of the two. I really like to work on stories that are current issues, so
they don't have to be the hard news. Currently I'm working on a long-term project about co-housing.
Last year i finished my long-term project "Born free" on which i worked for 12 years. 12 years. It
was a forever long project about youth in South Africa growing up around Apartheid's ending.
We're on our way to the Dao family, which is a family I've visited a couple of times before.
Today I'm going to photograph them in their home. So it's a co-housing structure where
it's a son and a daughter-in-law living together with both sets of parents. They really
did this out of a belief that it's better to live together and that the way the Netherlands is so
individualistic, where people have their own home and live alone is maybe not the best way to live.
So they decided to move in together and they've been living like this for the past three years.
So when I arrive at a family like I did today and I'm taking pictures of a family
either during lunch or during a walk or during working in the garden it doesn't really matter.
But whatever part of their day I'm photographing I'm really sure to be there a hundred percent.
I want to be able to hold a conversation and at the same time take pictures.
And I just feel it's really important that I am connected to them and they are connected to me.
And I think that's what photography is actually all about, to connect to each other.
I just recently started using the Canon EOS R5 and it's the fastest camera I've ever used. You just can't imagine!
I just took pictures outside of the children jumping on the trampoline
and the camera just locks on the eyes. And it doesn't matter how fast they jump it just locks on
every picture is sharp. And I think that's why you need great equipment, because these stories are fast.
Things happen and if you miss them you miss them. It's not a film set
you can't say "Okay please do that again!" No! It's journalism: when you miss it, you miss!
And it's really sad but I've really noticed that with this camera you don't have to miss anything!
You're everywhere, it's super quick.
So that's why I love working with this camera.
It's important that they don't notice me too much.
So even though I'm chatting to them at the same time I will sometimes tell them "Please ignore me pretend I'm not here,
just do what you would be doing."
And then i just start shooting and I don't interact that much anymore I think that's very important,
because their life has to just to continue so I can shoot intimate moments as well.
People crying, people being angry at each other, people having fun.
All of that is what life is about and that's what I want to capture. So you don't want to be too much in their face,
Even though I'm in their face with my camera it's important for me to always
keep a distance in a way as well. So i'm there but I'm not there.
While taking pictures during lunch things happen very quickly. So I have the two grandmothers
sitting on my left side. Jonas the young boy sitting on my right side. And I want to be
quick and I also want to be close. So I had my 35mm on and especially with
the young boy sitting next to me he has such beautiful facial expressions I just moved in
super closely like the distance was like this. And the images like his eye was super sharp.
What I really try to do as a photographer is not to take all the pictures from eye level.
So sometimes I really have to sit down or lay down on the ground and shoot up, sometimes I'm standing
on a chair and shooting down. Because if you work on a project for so long and all your
images are shot from the front it gets super boring when you put all the pictures together
after one or two or five years. You need diversity in a long-term project. So that's what I would
really say if you're working on your own long-term project be diverse in the angles you choose.
One of the struggles I have had in the past years and also currently while working with this family
is that I'm interacting with people so I'm chatting to them and at the same time
sometimes I see a shot happening to the side of them and it just feels wrong sometimes to
interrupt a conversation and start shooting. But as a photographer, I really have to tell
myself as well you have to be blunt sometimes, you have to be like "Sorry, one moment." and you
take the picture. Because when it it's over when it happens it's gone. So you just have to shoot.
If you feel you have the perfect idea to work on as a long-term project I would give you one advice
and that is to start shooting. Start shooting right away don't even plan to start shooting
in the upcoming months or years because what's going to happen and I've had that happening before
is that someone else is going to do the same project and you feel like
"Oh, I don't want to do it anymore it's been done already." So if you have a good idea now
just start to take the first pictures and if you have the first pictures you will notice that it
becomes more interesting more interesting more interesting and you just take it away, shoot it,
show it to editors and get it published. That's how I would do it, so please, just start shooting!
It's sometimes also difficult to quit a long-term project because things started adding to it.
You're taking more pictures you start to do video. In the end I decided that "Born free" had to become
a book. An exhibition. A multimedia website. i made a documentary, a long-form and a short-form
documentary. So it just kept growing and growing and I can really imagine that this
new project about co-housing could actually go into the same direction.
So I love it when long-term projects don't only get published into media
but then it becomes more. So yeah this is just the start not sure where it's going to end.