MAURICE VAN ES
Time, as a concept, has caused a great deal of fascination since its very beginnings. Technology is constantly progressing to enable us to achieve more in shorter periods of time. On certain occasions we wish time would go slower and on others, faster. Time heals all. Time means growth but also old age and the inevitability of death. Capturing time has been the job and driving interest of many artists, writers and filmmakers for centuries. Dorothea Lange once said, “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”
Maurice Van Es is an emerging Dutch photographer whose work portrays this perpetual human compulsion towards the understanding and representation of time. On an interview with the online photography magazine, ILOVETHATPHOTO, Van Es talks about his thesis:
“Why do people photograph… As a conclusion I thought people use photography to express their powerlessness to time. It’s the most we can do to control time. Like first we came up with paintings to perpetuate the most important persons. And later on photography took over this role and made it accessible for everyone. But this need to still time, to enrich the now, was always there.”
There is no particular ongoing subject matter theme in Van Es’s work. He simply photographs his life. However, in everything he photographs from cupcakes, to flowers to stuffed birds and close ups of different materials and textures, there is evidence of a sort of sophisticated examination of seemingly trivial, somewhat personal everyday life details.
Van Es’s publication ‘Now Will Not be With Us Forever’, deals with the concept of time both thematically and in the physical way it is presented. “I like the fact that you can take a picture of a moment in time that never comes back. In my final work ‘Now Will Not be With Us Forever’ I try to accentuate this time aspect of photography by focussing on the relationships I have with the objects and persons around me.”
The publication is presented in the form of a book cassette containing seven different books. Each of these books concentrates on playful aspects of the trivial. For example, one of the books is a compilation of photographs that Van Es took of his mother’s unintentional installations around his parents’ house (for example, pile of folded towels). “In my work I try to make photography valuable to myself again and I am wondering what the photographed will mean to me in 5 or 10 years.”
http://mauricevanes.nl
Words / Ana Gomides
Maurice Van Es is an emerging Dutch photographer whose work portrays this perpetual human compulsion towards the understanding and representation of time. On an interview with the online photography magazine, ILOVETHATPHOTO, Van Es talks about his thesis:
“Why do people photograph… As a conclusion I thought people use photography to express their powerlessness to time. It’s the most we can do to control time. Like first we came up with paintings to perpetuate the most important persons. And later on photography took over this role and made it accessible for everyone. But this need to still time, to enrich the now, was always there.”
There is no particular ongoing subject matter theme in Van Es’s work. He simply photographs his life. However, in everything he photographs from cupcakes, to flowers to stuffed birds and close ups of different materials and textures, there is evidence of a sort of sophisticated examination of seemingly trivial, somewhat personal everyday life details.
Van Es’s publication ‘Now Will Not be With Us Forever’, deals with the concept of time both thematically and in the physical way it is presented. “I like the fact that you can take a picture of a moment in time that never comes back. In my final work ‘Now Will Not be With Us Forever’ I try to accentuate this time aspect of photography by focussing on the relationships I have with the objects and persons around me.”
The publication is presented in the form of a book cassette containing seven different books. Each of these books concentrates on playful aspects of the trivial. For example, one of the books is a compilation of photographs that Van Es took of his mother’s unintentional installations around his parents’ house (for example, pile of folded towels). “In my work I try to make photography valuable to myself again and I am wondering what the photographed will mean to me in 5 or 10 years.”
http://mauricevanes.nl
Words / Ana Gomides
