Biography

Discussion

Paul Kooiker produces series of photographic images. Each completed work functions as a separate entry in his ideal encyclopaedia, an imaginary atlas of life initiated during his final year of study at the RABK (Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, ‘National Academy of Fine Arts’) in Amsterdam. While Kooiker possesses full-fledged technical training in photography, he sees no need for a dogma stipulating the ‘proper’ application of technical devices. In his view, perfect images frequently arise from the conscientious misuse of the camera.

Kooiker began taking photographs from the age of twelve. At school, he was in fact the only one interested in signing up for creative courses. His secondary school offered classes in photography as an extracurricular activity. It is there that Kooiker made his first prints at the age of fifteen. From that moment on, he knew he wanted to be a photographer. At the age of eighteen, Kooiker was accepted to the KABK (Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, ‘Royal Academy of Art’) in The Hague—despite not having a secondary school diploma—based on his photographic work. The photography department, set up just a few years earlier as a product of the merging of the MTS (Middelbare Technische School, ‘Intermediate Technical School’) for Photography and Photonics (also in The Hague) and the KABK, was more technically than artistically oriented. Kooiker views his internships with Kees Tabak, the pop photographer, and especially the fashion photographer, Billie Glaser, as essential to his training. In his view, this practical aspect of his study allowed him to learn more efficiently and swiftly. Glaser responded enthusiastically to Kooiker’s experiments and encouraged him to become more serious in devising a photographic idiom of his own.

Kooiker’s final exam presentation—a series of thirty polaroid shots based on the performances of twenty-five women—was more conceptual versus strictly photographic in nature. His work was nevertheless well received and greatly admired. Kooiker had asked these women, who were all his age, to read and act out a fairly dramatic story in a room that was closed off, invisible to himself but not to the camera. They themselves were able to determine the moments that the polaroid shots were to be taken. From these images, Kooiker compiled his series. With this particular project, the concept was more important than any one photo. In the four years that followed, Kooiker expanded his artistic horizon. An exhibition of surrealistic photography at the Hayward Gallery in London, entitled L’Amour fou, confronted Kooiker with a shock of recognition. It consisted of work by photographers who treated photography as a means to tell a strictly personal story. The exhibition included works by Hans Bellmer and Jacques André Boiffard.

In addition to photography, Kooiker was also producing collages on an intensive basis during this period, which he created with photographs taken by others. His photos and collages—most visualising a crude, imaginary world—were featured in artist’s publications such as Bev, Pek, and Zerkaio. This last title—Russian for ‘mirror’— refers to the title of a film directed by Andrej Tarkovski, whose melancholy oeuvre made a major impression on the young photographer. Even more important for his development were films by the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose distinctively authentic attitude towards cinema is still an important source of inspiration for Kooiker to the present day.

In 1990, Kooiker was accepted to the RABK in Amsterdam, a post-academic study offering young artists a period of two years to improve the level of their craftsmanship in a sheltered environment. Kooiker took advantage of the institute’s spacious facilities to experiment with what he calls ‘the margins of photography’, e.g. collages and installations.

Kooiker only works project-by-project and based on carefully developed concepts. The processing of an idea is sometimes a lengthy process, depending on the concept’s complexity. It begins with the gathering of images intended to give the idea its form: the appropriate models and/or locations have to be ascertained and photographed. From this raw material, Kooiker makes a selection. In order to determine the final design for the series in question, Kooiker frequently experiments extensively with technique and format. The result always consists of a collection of images, which, in his view, together form a single work through a unity in content and the manner in which they are presented. His completed projects—always based on images obtained by photographic means—come in all shapes and forms. They may consist of a series of slides shown in a specific rhythm via different projectors, or a series of baryta prints in miniature format, or several dozen inkjet prints of tremendous proportions. A finished work is never a closed book for Kooiker: what follows is an ‘unintentional’ allocation to an art historical context. He then begins—purely out of interest—to collect photos and books in which he observes similarities to his concept and/or the images in his project.

Kooiker’s most direct inspiration is derived from two highly distinct categories of photography: medical photography and model photography as practiced by amateur photographers. His fascination with nineteenth-century medical photography—often a cold, neutral registration of dramatic inflictions, which in our time and especially in the Western world virtually no longer exists—is expressed above all in his series featuring women with an eating disorder. Yet it can also be encountered in the series, ‘Close-Ups’ and ‘blauwe vrouwen’ (‘Blue Women’).

Another important element in Kooiker’s oeuvre are the intuitive, obsessive methods on which amateur photographers rely. His personal collection includes hundreds of examples of models photographed by amateur photographers, with prime emphasis placed on the spontaneous and occasionally absurd images shot by enthusiasts of this genre.

Between 1990 and 2003, Kooiker realised twelve completed projects. First came the aforementioned collages from 1990: works with a sombre, even depressing atmosphere. Following this, Kooiker ‘researched’ the concept of an Encyclopaedia of Life in 1991. Both of these projects were executed in black-and-white. For some time after, however, his worked exclusively in colour. During the final year of his study at the RABK, Kooiker began to compile a collection of images for his ‘encyclopaedia’. During this period, he photographed everything that inspired him, whether it be the picture of a cat, an intriguing tattoo, or an orthopaedic shoe. He divided these photos into eight widely defined categories, such as ‘animal life’ or ‘people and illness’. Every photo he took fit into one of these categories. Even his later photographic series functioned as entries in this Encyclopaedia of Life. While Kooiker realises the impossibility of this project in retrospect, it has provided him with a useful basis for organising his photographic work.

A series of images depicting women with eating disorders was completed in 1993. Kooiker wished to show the transparency and vulnerability of the human skin. The series bears some similarity to the work of painters like Co Westerik and Lucien Freud, artists he holds in high esteem. Kooiker’s images were so confrontational that viewers turned away in shock. Judging from the responses, Kooiker understood these photos had surpassed their intended aim.

In 1994, Kooiker photographed everyday human discomforts: close up, cold registrations, direct and vivid, but void of humour. He used a flash for all of the shots, taken consistently at a distance of thirty centimetres. It was a concept he devised to ensure he had every liberty to do that which was forbidden ‘according to the rules’. The blauwe vrouwen-serie (‘Blue Women’ series) from 1995 is an experiment with image sharpness—an investigation into how voyeurism works. Kooiker photographed several dozen women naked in their own interiors. Just as with his series of everyday human discomforts, he applied a thirty-centimetre point of focus. The models were photographed in full-length, which resulted in interiors abstracted by blur. Kooiker did the printing himself, to ensure the colour nuances supported his initial conception. In the forty photos of 50 x 50 cm, the blurred nudes are standing in a cold, blue light in surroundings that are scarcely identifiable. The viewer has the tendency to look at the photos from close up, but this produces an even greater indistinctness. From farther away, the photos become clearer, but only with the loss of details. As such, Kooiker confronts the viewer with his or her voyeurism.

In 1995 and ’96, Kooiker realised the groene serie (‘Green Series’), for which he was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1996. A tactic comparable to that found in the ‘Blue Women’ series lies at the heart of this series. It consists of forty photos, again blurred, of a forest-like environment in which small white spots can be seen. Most are abstract wisps in beautifully lit, richly layered green landscapes; sometimes they are recognisable as human forms—women urinating in nature. The voyeuristic theme is therefore further examined in a playful manner.

The next series of images, called Hunting and Fishing (1997-1999), required a great deal of time. This was particularly because the shots depended upon finding suitable models, the right locations, and ideal weather conditions. At the same time, the various forms of presentation necessitated a lengthy process in order to come to fruition. The images in this series are based on a clearly formulated concept—women running away in the green, rolling landscape. In their execution, however, they are far more diverse in form and more colourful than the earlier projects. As such, they offer the viewer more possibilities for interpretation. Besides the inevitable aspect of voyeurism, invoked by blur and nudity, other motifs and fantasies as well rise to the surface: is the viewer witness to a game among lovers or a physical assault? Is this a nostalgic representation of a paradisiacal nudism or does it concern arcadian nymphs, who hide themselves elusively in a teasingly provocative manner. Through the apparent fluttering and the colourful blur, this series as well bears similarities to art photography of the late nineteenth-century, as well as impressionist or even symbolist painting. In 1999, the series was published in a unique booklet, with Kooiker exhibiting the images according to their definitive layout and arrangement.

During this same period, in the years 1997 and 1978, Kooiker expanded his series of close-ups depicting human discomforts, produced four years earlier, for a publication and exhibition entitled Utrechtse Krop (‘Utrecht Goitre’, 1998), which combined Kooiker’s photos with nineteenth-century medical photos from the collection of the Utrecht University Museum.

In 2000, two series were realised, which, in terms of content and form, at first glance seem to deviate from Kooiker’s other projects. For Friesland is…, an exhibition displaying the work of ten contemporary artists from the Netherlands and abroad, Kooiker created a collection of Frisian (village) landscapes, freely photographed from inside a moving train, with church towers in the distance serving as the unifying element. In this same year, Kooiker produced a photographic series on Parisian fountains for a presentation in the Institut Néerlandais (‘Netherlands Institute’) in Paris during the Mois de la Photo (‘Month of the Photo’), with photos taken from unusual camera angles. In spite of the fact that both series were executed in black-and-white and featured the (urban) landscape as their motifs—thereby appearing to be exceptions in Kooiker’s oeuvre—there are also similarities. Firstly, the church towers and fountains are represented just as anonymously as the human models in his previous series. Secondly, they share the same unified character, i.e. their serial nature connects them to Kooiker’s systematic working approach.

With his series Model Studies, Kooiker once again clearly focuses on the human body. It comprises numerous images depicting nude and half-nude women. Kooiker plays out his fascination with medical photography and (erotic) amateur photography. All of the women portrayed are unidentifiable: as often occurs in medical photography, the subjects’ heads fall just outside the image frame, or the women are photographed from the back, or with their eyes closed. In actuality, the series centres on the same anonymity found in the (urban) landscapes of the previous series. Particularly noticeable in these model studies is the great variation in composition and the use of colour. A number of these images have been purposefully composed from an aesthetic standpoint, but in most Kooiker seeks to test the boundaries of good taste, entering the realm of kitsch.

In 2003, Kooiker presented Model Studies II, both in book form and as an exhibition. This series consists of a large number of black-and-white prints and comprises elements found in virtually all of his series made in the past. While the model may indeed function as the photo’s inspiration, the focus is also directed at the studio in which the session occurs: the space surrounding the model as the witness of an intense occurrence. The images bring to mind associations with police photos taken at crime scenes.

The photo projects described above have all contributed to Paul Kooiker’s ‘watermark’, not because they depict fountains, church towers, and nudes, but because he photographed these images in his own special way and presented them in terms of a specific unity. Intriguing is that Kooiker combines a conceptual approach with a free and experimental approach to the so-called ‘rules’ of photography. Blur, an exaggerated use of colour, and ostensibly indifferent compositions lend an authenticity to Kooiker’s work, which ultimately led to an exhibition of his work in The Hague, alongside the much earlier work of Gerard Fieret and that of the contemporary photographer Arno Nollen. With Kooiker, the significance of the objects photographed is secondary to the manner in which they are represented. The result can be beautiful, upsetting, ironic, or intriguing, but in all cases personal. Kooiker’s work stands as a commentary on the traditional values encountered in photography, making way for new approaches to visualisation.

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