IC w4 Hunter, farmer, objective or subjective

HildeMaassen
Feb 16, 2020
2 min read

Updated: Aug 16, 2020

Hunting or being hunt.

It was years ago that I was in Amsterdam with a presentation of Joop van Tellingen; The first Dutch paparazzi photographer. He followed the royal family and other celebrities.

He told about a photo he took with a friend of the, in time, future royal prince Willem Alexander. How he jumped before them to take the picture (he was hidden behind a column at the airport). He made the first image and the prince's reaction was to beat him. Van Tellingen was very proud that it had happened. He made the comparison that in earlier times, if you had done something good, you could become a knight and that he felt that way after being beaten by the prince. He thought that by taking that photo he had done something extremely good.

ree — Foto: Isabella Roozendaal "Isabella Hunts" - ca. 2019

The term hunting brings me also immediately back to an exhibition and meeting with Isabella Roozendaal, last year. She literally travels the world to photograph hunters while she hunts them to take photos. But she is also a farmer. She did courses and exams to become a hunter herself and she puts a lot of effort in research and connecting to the people she wants to photograph. http://www.isabellahunts.com

Am I a hunter?

I am looking for beautiful or specially shaped clouds, and when I see them I run to the camera to hunt them down, capture them. On the way I stop when I drive or cycle. I think every person is a hunter for something; it is a DNA thing. This works for relationships, jobs, studies and so on. When you have what you hunted for you and you want to keep it than you have to become a farmer.

As soon as I have the photo, the farming part starts. Sometimes I work for hours in a row to cultivate, let grow, one photo in such a way that an image grows that is representative of what is going on with the clouds in the context of climate change.

Objectivity

I am white, feminine, raised in the west with a Catholic background; I think objectivity is an illusion. But I am currently playing with the illusion of taking an objective position by referring to maps, adding GPS coordinates and categorizing used colors.