Street Photography nominee

New Years dive is a local beach event in Scheveningen, which takes place beach close to the pleasure pier.
With an increasing popularity local people and also guests like to start the New Year by diving into the ice-cold North Sea. This year about ten thousand people made the dive!

In 1818 (exactly 200 years ago) the first bathhouse was placed on the beach. This was the start of the development of our coastal town as a bathing resort. Before that the beach was mainly used as a starting point for fishing boats to leave. The sea was necessary as a source of economic activity but it was also dangerous and every year many people died doing their work out on the sea. This also happened to the elder brother of my father who drowned here, just a few weeks after my country was liberated from the Germans in May 1945.

But times have changed and today the fear from the sea which people experienced has disappeared and has been replaced by thrill seeking and having fun...

I was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in September 1967. Photography has been a part of who I am and the way I see the world since the age of 12. I rediscovered photography in the early days of digital and for quite some time I focused on shooting travel and wildlife.
Early 2017 I participated in a street photography workshop in Myanmar with Maciej Dacowicz. This was a revolution in the way I experienced photography. Suddenly something just clicked. My focus has now shifted completely to the street and since then it has been a complete rollercoaster as I find myself shooting with inspired street photographers in my home town and in cities all over the world, discovering the opportunities of social media, meeting new people with a shared passion and starting my own projects.

Since then, my work is getting quite a bit attention. Not only on social media. An exhibition in Photoville, Brooklyn displayed one or my prints; A Dutch platform on street photography (straatfotografie.nl) paid attention to my work; this month a Russian magazine (Bird in Flight) will publish my long term project 'Pier to Pier' and later this year I'll publish my first book.