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Angelina Loqui

I am still working on the Third Gender series, and I will probably be working on this project for the rest of the year. Not because it is hard to find the right models, but I am no expert at socializing on networks, and I am quite strict when it comes to making appointments.

Call me old-fashioned, but I expect people to show up when I make an appointment. The queens I work with are often real diva’s. At least half of those who are offered a free shoot to participate in the book will at least cancel the shoot once. I experienced this before in photographing drag queens, so I have learned to refuse rescheduling shoots. An attitude that slows down production quite dramatically, but accepting endless rescheduling is not workable either.

But the upside of working with diva’s is that they are often very creative and fun to work with. Scheduling models for the 21st Century Madonnas series involving nudity was quite time-consuming too. There are currently enough horror stories about photographers on the web to demotivate most people to pose.

Angelina, however, is one of those people who will always keep appointments and I absolutely love working with her.

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Stage photography

I am a studio photographer at heart. I like to control the lights, I love neutral backgrounds because there is no distraction of the person photographed. Of course, it also has a timeless quality to it that I like. Seeing a photograph of a model photographed in an empty factory or an abandoned building automatically dates the photograph back to somewhere between 1995 and 2010. The older photographers and collectors will always recognize a 1970s photograph by the doom and gloom clouds above the subject and the excessive use of wide-angle lenses.

Working on the book ‘The Third Gender’ I realize I cannot get away with the use of studio portraits only, so there will be a lot of behind the scenes photography to illustrate how the project evolved. Also – and here comes the hard part for me – I will have to go out to do stage and event photography. I have very little experience with that, but I noticed it has become a lot easier with digital cameras, thanks to the high ISO values one can work with.

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The Third Gender

There are already some previews on my Facebook profile and this site. It is probably the largest project I ever embarked on. It is my aim to photograph at least a hundred persons who express themselves with a total lack of conventions when it comes to gender stereotypes.

In a way this project is the continuation of a series I started in 1978 with photographs of drag queens, transvestites and transgenders. The old material paired with the recent photographs will form the framework for a book to be published in 2019.

For this project I will be teaming up with my son Max van der Kamp who has always been a great supporter of my work. He is an art director at heart and he will be doing the design of this publication. Please check out his website for more information.

If you would like to be photographed for this publication, please do not hesitate to contact me!

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The New Site

This new site is a make-over of the old one dating back to 2016. Although the previous one was responsive, this one is even better for use on phones and tablets. I am no fan of smartphones, but I do like to adjust to people visiting my site.

Also, this site is way easier for me to update and I sincerely hope I will have more updates in 2018. You will find four new sections in the portfolio:

21st Century Madonnas – My take on blasphemy
Mistresses – A selection of photographs I made for Dominatrices over the last three years
The Russians Are Coming! – A satirical approach to the Cold War revival
Dollification – About human dolls. A series in need of expansion

I hope you will appreciate this new set-up, and I hope to hear from you soon!

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A promise kept

While doing the make-over of this site, I found a post about Dollification. In that text, I promised to feature dolls in my portfolio. As I now realize, I never did.

Maybe this was caused by a lack of models. Dolls are hard to find. It is easy enough to turn any human into a doll, but I am no fashion photographer. I am always looking for real people doing what they love to do.

At age 50 I decided to start photographing all fetishes. A project I naively calculated to take at least five years. Now I understand that no photographer will ever finish such a job even if he had nine lives like a cat. But the process in itself is a wonderful journey too.

Today I posted a portfolio page with dolls. I will be adding more photographs along the way.

Click here to go to the Dollification page.

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Through The Past (1)

1977, Utrecht. It would be nice to say that I was working my way through college by working different jobs, but in fact I didn’t see much of the Art Academy. I had random jobs. I would also work as a photographer for the Adonis Bar, a gay club situated at the city’s main canal Oude Gracht.

Occasionally I had a job at a factory producing toothpaste and I even managed to keep a steady job at UFAC, the main photo laboratory of the city for a few months. Mostly however, I was diverting my time between getting drunk at student parties or hustling the local gay scene. A young man or boy with acceptable looks and a diverse sexuality truly is blessed in this world.

Soon I became the main photographer of the Adonis Bar and I would be summoned in the middle of the night by Henny the Hairdressser (middle) or Plumeau, the local Drag Queen celebrity. They would ask me to document just about every adventure they embarked on. Such as this nightly ride in a carriage rented from a company specializing in wedding ceremonies.

Much like today, this was not without danger. They were sitting high and dry, and I was running along the pavement to capture the glamour of it all. I was charging one guilder for each photograph they liked. I have had worse jobs in my life.