Gender – Vanuit de Verte

The June exhibit of 21st Century Madonnas in Zürich, Switzerland was cancelled due to the lockdown. Plans to get the GENDER! exhibit on the road for artistic and educational purposes were postponed.

Luckily NDSM-fuse had 600 square meters available for an exhibit. At first I was quite overblown by the idea of filling such a large space, but the offer came on my 65th birthday, so I spontaneously decided to go for a retrospective of photographic works, created between 1977 and 2020.

Also, they had some space left for the last week of Pride Month to exhibit part of the GENDER! series.

So a selection of the GENDER! series now serves as a ‘prequel’ of the retrospective which I named UNCENSORED, since I had so many problems posting my works on social media over the last decades.

Within the UNCENSORED exhibit you will find the complete GENDER! exhibit plus all major themes in my work since 1977, including the oldest Rockers series.

At times, I have to remind myself that it is not completely true when I say I am a portrait photographer at heart. I may have started out as a portrait photographer, but by directing the models I photograph, I distance myself from what a real portrait should be – an objective image of the person portrayed. Of course, I am very much aware that there is no such thing as pure objectivity in photography, but asking people to make specific dramatic gestures does not fit in what we call portrait photography.

So what is my role in photography, I often ask myself. Is this glamour photography? Not really although I do my best to make people look good in a picture. Glamour is all about trying to reach broad audiences through creating larger than life images. In many directories I am listed as a fine art photographer, but I have changed over the last few years. I am slowly going back to where I started out with the Rockers series. An art critic called me an amateur anthropologist as that series first came out. Maybe that is true or maybe I just like the idea. I guess once there are no questions left I will stop doing what I do.

Model: Obesia Grandé