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.
About blind optimism and decisiveness I always do my best to encourage AI to think a little more internationally, but it is a futile exercise. The American signature, in which nationalism and puritanism play a prominent role, is not easily suppressed. The problem starts with nationalism itself. We Europeans know better than most that nationalism … Read more
Why European law is not a software setting you can switch off It is about time that someone in the Netherlands took action against the kind of legal corrosion that occurs when companies start copying Terms and Conditions from other companies. Terms that may be perfectly valid in the United States, but are completely at … Read more
Notes on creativity, money, aging and the strange idea of success There are questions you hear your entire life as a creative person. You can make something beautiful and the response is almost always the same: “Does it pay well?” It is a rhetorical question, because almost everywhere in the world people in independent creative … Read more
People like to talk about AI “hallucinating.” It sounds clever, but it is sloppy language. Hallucination belongs to the human mind. What we are dealing with here is a system that produces plausible nonsense when it runs out of solid ground. Another familiar complaint is that AI generated images look “generic.” That tends to say … Read more
How facts become narratives and narratives become revenue Whether something is real or actually happened is, to me, largely irrelevant. That may sound a bit defiant, since the search for truth has become a popular form of entertainment. My experience is that almost everything is partly true and partly untrue. Journalism may have shaped that … Read more
On Americans in Amsterdam and the things we do not say out loud I no longer get angry at systems and tools that come with a certain couleur locale. When you sit at a table with Americans, which in central Amsterdam happens more often than not these days, you listen to how we Dutch are … Read more
On reinvention, self-belief, and the quiet efficiency of a well-timed absence. Today marks exactly thirty years since my Life Coach died. I call him mine, though in truth he had very little time for me once he upgraded himself to that fashionable title. I knew him better when he was still a DJ, then a … Read more
Why understanding your failures requires more than remembering them One of the many privileges of old age is that it allows you to reflect carefully on the mistakes you have made in your life. That sounds more troubled than it really is, or perhaps my view of my past, and of society as a whole, … Read more
A conversation about AI, doubt, and the quiet instability of truth Yesterday I had a conversation with my son about the fact that everyone at his workplace talks about AI all day. He uses AI occasionally himself, but for him it is not a topic that should replace all other office conversation. I do not … Read more
From autofocus to AI image generation, convenience becomes a method. Control becomes conditional. It only looks like its opposite. I work constantly, seven days a week if necessary, ten to twelve hours a day.. I work constantly, seven days a week if necessary, ten to twelve hours a day. Most office workers do not come … Read more