” I was born in The Hague in the early 60’s and lived there till I was 7. For those who don’t know, the Hague is where the government is in the Netherlands. We moved to a smaller village where my father took on a lease of a large tennis complex. He was a Chef by trade so he took over the catering and bar. I have basically grown up with a tennis racket in my hand. After many years we moved to a satellite town near The Hague again called Zoetermeer. The city was designed with parklands and bicycle tracks, so it was great fun.
I didn’t do well at school. I was bored stiff and I couldn’t really see the point of school except for art and drama which I excelled in. My report cards were terrible and I was in trouble constantly. I struggled through to high school and in the Dutch system at the end of year 6 you get a test which chooses whether you go into the lowest, middle or the highest high school. I ended up in the lowest one which was ok because it was so easy, and I got great marks so I was singled out as the guy that didn’t belong there. They gave me another test and put me in the middle school. I was about 14 and my interests were elsewhere. I loved drama and ran the Drama class within the high school. I directed plays but still my report cards were very poor. They booted me out and I went to another school where I got booted out as well. I was about 16 and I had no more schools I could go to. I’d gone through them all.
My friend’s sister was going to a TAFE that was specifically for mothers. It was called Mother High School. My own mother was over me getting kicked out so didn’t want to take any more responsibility. They had done their best as parents. I called the lady who ran the mother high school and told her my story. By law I still had to go to school and she was my only option. She was lovely. We had a long chat and she accepted me. Classes were only Monday to Wednesday 9 – 12. That was it. They were basically teaching you the essence of what you needed to know in life. Geography was just geography. Not hours stretched out of stuff you would never need.
I finished high school and decided to come to Australia. In those days it was easier to get in. I really liked it here. It was the early 80’s in Sydney. The rents and food were cheap. I worked and did all the things you do in Sydney in those days. I tried to apply for an acting course at the Nepean College of advanced education. I had a great love of theatre but the head of school said, ‘This is Australia, you have an accent, you’ve got buckleys chance of getting an acting job.’ That’s what it was like in the early 80’s. My girlfriend at the time was right into Photography. I started taking my own photographs and applied to Sydney college of the Arts in Balmain to get into a BA of Visual Arts majoring in Photography which I did. I did the 3 years and spent a lot of time in libraries teaching myself. I graduated and pursued a career in professional Photography and went back to the Netherlands. I lived in Amsterdam and got a job in a commercial studio where they did everything, catalogues, fashion shoots, they photographed ship engines, anything commercial which was great. I learnt so much.
After 2 years I started working for myself. I worked on magazines and basically freelanced. I had my own studio and loved Amsterdam. Because I was working I was paying tax. The taxation department got hold of my info and shared it with the military service. Because I had left the Netherlands when I was 18 I hadn’t done my compulsory military service. The letter came for my first medical. I was about 28. I wrote back but still I had to go. I ignored the letters so they phoned me and said they would send the military Police around and I would be sent to jail in Rotterdam for 18 months. That was the law. I went for the medical and was sitting with 18 year old boys feeling rather old. I passed the medical and was told to report to the army barracks. I would have been sent for 16 months. I tried to stall in every way but in the end I escaped back to Australia. A year later they abolished compulsory military service so it would have been even worse if I had gone into the army.
I came back to Sydney, worked for SBS TV as a stills Photographer, worked for National Parks and Wildlife basically just freelancing. I was living in Paddington opposite the College of Fine Arts (COFA) and they had just finished a new wing. I got in to do my Masters and that’s where I learnt all things digital which really opened my mind. I graduated after 2 years and a good friend was working at Charles Sturt Uni in Wagga Wagga. By this time I was living in Newtown. I applied for a job in a Mac lab in Wagga and got it. I rented a rambling old farm house out of Wagga for really cheap. A Professor at the Uni had gone through my CV, called me into his office and said why are working as a technician when you have all this photography experience. There is a job at Albury for a lecturer in Photography. I got that job, had a great mentor and I stayed for 10 years teaching Photography.
I met a woman from SCU, Fiona Fell who is a Ceramicist. Our studios were close to each other and she mentioned they needed someone to rewrite the program for Photography at SCU. I moved from Albury to Federal with my partner and worked at SCU for 7 years. We bought a house, had a baby and the uni flushed out a few casual positions including mine. Luckily my partner had a good job so she had to go back to work. We didn’t want to put Darcy who was only one into childcare so I became a house Dad. I did that till he was 4. At night I dabbled in my art and I stumbled across this alternative way of making photographs which I had learned at Uni, Cyanotype and Gum bichromate. It’s a beautiful process. I’ve been doing workshops in Cyanotype printing for about 5 years now.
I moved to Lismore about 8 years ago. There is a lot of creative people who have ended up here. I run the workshops in Lismore, Byron school of Arts, I go as far as Gympie. I do a lot of work through Tweed River Gallery. Last year I went as far as Cootamundra. I also teach workshops for Instagram for artists
I’m involved in another project which has been running for 20 years or so which is called Facing Australia . There are 3 of us, we make faces of communities according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We did the face of Albury after the Census. We came up with the idea that we could get the Sensis data and photograph 50 people who represent the Census. So 2 babies, one Chinese guy, an Italian, a Hungarian , etc. We went out and spoke to people and we created a male and a female face. We photographed all these people then stacked them on top of each other. 50 people, 2% opacity in the layers so you end up with a face that is a mixture according top the bureau of statistics. That then got published in The Border Mail which was a local newspaper. A guy who worked for the Australian was driving through town, stopped for a coffee and opened the newspaper . He saw the faces, contacted us and wanted to do a story in The Australian which he did. We then got a call from the curator of the Brisbane Museum who had great interest and wanted a suite of Brisbane faces. We made 5 Brisbane faces from all the diverse suburbs, had a large exhibition and it was an enormous success. We had photographed so many people to make up those 5 faces. We also exhibited the images of the individual people so we had thousands come through the exhibition. We’ve now done the face of Sydney, the face of the Barossa, the face of the Melbourne football club, the face of Kalgoorlie and more.
Currently we are working on the faces from 1788 to 2056, past into the future. We are using data with faces from all over the world. So with that data we are creating the face of say 1860. In addition we are also making the oldest face, the youngest, the most diverse face in Australia. Last year we did a big job in Albury where we made films about the first world war which is based on letters and stories from that time. All sorts of letters, legal, dates that were wrong, getting access to bank accounts, who would get the war medal of the deceased son when the parents were divorced, so the nitty gritty of war. We hired actors to read out these letters then we overlay them with archival images and the letters themselves because they are beautifully hand written. A lot of it is tear jerking material. It’s an interesting aspect of Australian history most people don’t know about.”