Earth

The Mix Netherlands EARTH with the DOKAR (darkroom cart) A photographic research on a bicycle with my DOKAR (darkroom bicycle cart) 'driven' by Martien Coppens' photographs and landscape. Two photographers, one from the past, one from the present... 'Does photography also allow one photographer to express his insight differently from another professional? By this I do not mean that two or more photographers roaming at the same time and the same environment will bring out entirely different motifs, but that even two or more sensitive workers at the same time, from the same vantage point, shooting the same subject, will show work of entirely different content. When I answer this question with a resounding yes, I think of photography's strongest and most distinctive tool: exposure and restraint when enlarging. Tones are what make up the photograph, they determine the power of expression, and these are entirely in your hands, limited only by the extent to which you master this part of your technique. [...]' *Martien Coppens, 'De mensch in de fotografie', Focus publishing house, Bloemendaal 1946 7-11 (text written in 1941). A bicycle tour inspired by the work, methods, and landscape of photographer Martien Coppens (1908-1986). After research from Coppens' photographs and conversations with connoisseurs/his family, I decided to cycle to the nature reserve 'de Peel' with my DOKAR. A dark room on wheels that I pulled along behind my bicycle. 100 Km away from my home. I explored, photographed, developed, and made enlargements along the way. I reacted to what I encountered. The photos formed an 'image rhyme' with several photos selected by me by Martien Coppens from the archive of the Nederlands Fotomuseum (Rotterdam, NL) and The Brabant Collection of Tilburg University (NL). I was trained at the time of analogue photography. There were no digital cameras on the market yet. The 'meditative nature' of working for hours in the darkroom, the magical rising of the image in the glow of the red light and not being able to see directly what you are doing while photographing made me long for that way of working and the focus that went with it. During my bike ride, I developed my films and made contact prints. After selection, I made enlargements in my cart. Like the photographing nineteenth-century Dutch explorer Alexine Tinne (1835-1869). She made a moving darkroom in a carriage. I see this way of working as a kind of pilgrimage. A self-initiated physical, moral, spiritual journey to the core of representation and photography. Also, as a 'tool' to get into conversation with people. This to turn encounters into valuable moments that can be photographed. For me as a photographer but also for those I met along the way. People are less and less aware of how an image is created due to the speed of technology. The mobile darkroom plays a role within that awareness. Coppens photographed journalistic items for newspapers and other periodicals. But he also photographs for himself. Autonomously. With the release of his books, his themes become clear. Portraits, 'life images', art treasures, folklore, general landscape, Peel landscape, 'sea landscape', subjectivity, refugee camps, labour and Antwerp. That photographing for itself integrated me. How to find a common denominator within my image mix with Martien Coppens between the 'for yourself', the 'for the other' and mainly the 'with the other'. I have compiled the results of my journey in a photo series entitled EARTH. Earth as in earthy, light, dark, nature, character, soul, spirituality and this with both feet in and on the earth. 'For a photograph to have meaning as a means of expression, it must step outside its own frame. It must set a new higher unity. Known things become new, unknown things become familiar to us'. *Martien Coppens, 'Photography as a means of expression', introduction catalogue exhibition van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 1952.