#01: An ode to looking
WATER
‘I love how water, something so smooth and liquid, can look like a solid when photographed. Like something that’s not real, something the human eye naturally can’t see. The immerse shininess is at some parts transparent and at some parts it reflects the light, making it a visual puzzle that is caught only at that exact moment in time and will never be the same again.’
‘I’m not being nationalistic and I know a lot of people think orange is hideous, but seriously: give it a try. I’m talking about the deep, warm orange that almost touches red. The kind of orange that soaks up the sun. It reminds me of everlasting summers and blue skies. It’s a bold colour but it’s not as heavy and screaming as a red can be. It’s grabbing attention, but it’s not that confronting. Combined with the right materials (smooth, shiny) and colours (silver, light grey, baby blue) it really is very pretty.’
PINK
‘Just because, a cool shade of light pink just soaks up all the light in a beautiful way’
This is a Dutch website that functions as a marketplace to sell items For me it’s an unlimited source of fantastic images. From accidental nudes to dogs sitting next to statues of dogs, it always surprises me. Some artists, like Jan Hoek (he’s amazing: janhoek.net) for example, even find their models to photograph on this website.
‘It sounds cheesy but this Italian island really is a paradise. From small mountain villages that take an hour of slippery small winding roads to UNESCO listed beaches that take an hour hiking on loose rocks. The light is always amazing, the shadows seem to have soo much more light in them than they have in the Netherlands. The food is great, the people friendly, the ocean is clear and it even aims to be a CO2 neutral island! This place inspires me so much with its colour, light and architecture.’
‘I am beyond inspired by the way he captures (carefully chosen) seemingly everyday scenes and makes them almost monumental. His images are never works alone; they’re part of installations existing of photos. Seemingly random, but again very carefully chosen, he prints them different sizes and hangs them in a place. There’s an ease, there room to breathe and that’s what I love so much. His work can be interpreted in multiple ways but most of all it’s really, really beautiful.’
‘Again, I don’t want to sound cheesy but if you look closely to the world around you, you might find the most beautiful things. Focus on details and try to find them at different places. Take a walk and just look or take a seat on a busy square. The things people leave behind, objects that have a practical function but have a specific aesthetic; every object is designed, but they come together randomly. There’s a juxtaposition in there that always keeps my mind spinning.’
Joost Termeer (1991) is a photographer currently graduating at the Utrecht School of the Arts. He sees images as his language; his intuitive work resolves around the fetishizing of materiality, light, colour and form. It is an ode to looking and associating.