A blog exists thanks to people in your personal life
who prefer to have nothing to do with you.
Max van Norden
This weblog exists mainly as an archive.
Over the past fifteen years I have produced photographs, exhibitions, magazines, and occasional essays. Along the way a surprising amount of information accumulated; exhibition dates, publications, fragments of projects, and small notes that would otherwise require long archaeological excavations of my own past.
This site therefore functions partly as a notebook, partly as a personal archive, and sometimes as a place for new writing.
I am a photographer and writer based in Amsterdam. My work has appeared in exhibitions, magazines, and several publications.
Some of that work was written under my own name, Hans van der Kamp, and some under one of my alter egos, such as Madame Boissevin and others from the early Internet days, such as WebMeesteres V. The most persistent of those is Max van Norden.
The name dates back to my early writing years. At the time my parents preferred that I did not publish certain literary experiments under the family name. My mother was chair of the Catholic Women’s Guild and involved in the Dutch Emancipation Council, not exactly the ideal background if your son debuts with stories about brothels and nocturnal adventures.
A different name solved the problem.
Max van Norden stayed.
He still appears occasionally when a little distance is required.