Archief

From Afar (Vanuit de Verte) is the personal blog of Hans van der Kamp, a Dutch photographer, author of Nette Mensen in een Nieuwe Tijd, and independent magazine publisher.
This website presents long-form visual essays, photography projects, and reflections on image, identity, and contemporary culture. This category of posts, both in English and Dutch, are for archival use only.

The Third Gender

by

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!

The New Site

by

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!

A promise kept

by

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.

Through The Past (1)

by

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.

The 40th Anniversary of the Rockers series

by

I can hardly grasp it, but it is 40 years ago that I ditched the advertising agency I was doing product photography for and started working on the Rockers series. I made thousands of photographs and the project at first almost left me broke, but over the years it became my bestselling project. The photographs are still popular and at times I feel like an old rock band on a come back tour with a public shouting to do my first hit once over.

Of course I am also very proud of this series. During this series a certain style of portrait photography evolved and up to this day I am faithful to that photographic approach.

This is a good time to start thinking about a book and my friend Norm came over to Amsterdam to write some poetic prose about the subject and we made this short movie to hopefully encourage people to buy the book that will be published in 2018.

Open House and Group Exhibit at Zuiderkerk

by

I was working on the 21st Century Madonnas series when I heard that this year’s group exhibit of local artists of the Nieuwmarkt area was planned to be at the Zuiderkerk, an impressive church around the corner of where I live. I was to select one work for this group exhibit of seventy artists, and I had immediately ruled out the 21st Century Madonnas series I was working on. That would be blasphemy. My strict Catholic upbringing occasionally shows in my decisions.
But the idea of exhibiting one of my 21st Century Madonnas in that giant church built in 1603 became irresistible.
So, after a night of feverish dreams and falling out of bed once, I decided to select one of the 21st Century Madonnas for the group exhibit.
 
Much to my surprise the work was accepted. There was a church service just before the exhibit reopened Sunday on 12:00, but no real protests were heard. The show was a success and I had an unexpected large number of people visiting my modest studio and of course this website.

Spuiten, maar vooral slikken

by

Op mijn telefoon verscheen een onbekend nummer en ik besloot tegen mijn gewoonte in toch op te nemen. Een kinderlijk klinkend stemmetje vroeg of ik Hans van der Kamp was. Ja, dat was ik, maar er zijn veel mensen die zo heten. ‘U bent toch de Nestor van de BDSM-fotografie?’ vroeg ze. Ik dacht na … Read more