Every so often, though, a brief lands on my desk that I did not write. A list of things that have to be visible. A product, a model, a magazine, a logo. Constraints I would never have chosen on my own. And the work that comes out of those days, more often than I expected when I started saying yes to it, ends up sharper than I thought it could be.

The clearest example I can give comes from the first time I shot for Dior Magazine.

On paper, the brief should have made the work impossible. Photograph the models in my own recognisable style. Black and white, silhouettes, anonymity, light and shadow, the work I had built my name on. But the jewellery had to be visible. In colour. The difference between gold and silver had to read clearly. The reflections had to behave. The light had to flatter the stones. And inside the same frames, the model still had to belong to Dior. Recognisable enough to be theirs. Anonymous enough to be mine.

I had never worked like that before.

But the work itself was never going to be anything other than mine. I am an artist. That is the first line of my biography and the last note of every shoot. The pictures I am known for, the ones that hang in galleries and live in books, come from a particular way of seeing. Black and white. Silhouette. A figure half lost in shadow. Dior knew that when they called. They did not hire me to make jewellery photography. They hired me to make my photography, and they trusted that the jewellery would find its place inside it.

The image you see is the image we shot. The portraits were made the way I always make them. The extra layer was the jewellery: photographed separately as well, lit from every side, so the reflections could land correctly and the stones could be brought to their best in post. Technically demanding photography on top of the work I usually do.

I left that shoot with images I am proud of. Not despite the constraints. Because of them.

I have been thinking about why for a long time. Why the cleanest work, more often than not, comes from the most defined conditions. Why a brief I did not write often takes me further than a day in the studio with no agenda at all. And why, after years of working both ways, I have stopped treating the two as opposites.

There is something specific I learned on that first Dior set, and on every set since, that I want to leave with you in this essay. How to keep your own eye intact inside someone else’s frame. What a client is actually buying when they hire an artist. The exact place where most makers lose themselves on commission, and the small refusal that prevents it. That last part is what I would tell a younger photographer if they asked me how to do this work without disappearing into it.

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The answer, almost always, is no one. Cities are designed every day, by policy, by budgets, by regulations, by speed. What they are rarely designed by is a single, long-term visual mind.

In film, this would be unthinkable. A production without an art director results in visual noise. Too many ideas, no hierarchy, no rhythm. So why do we accept this for the places we live in?

As a visually driven person, I believe every major city needs an art director. Not a decorator. Not someone chasing trends. But a role with responsibility for visual coherence, material honesty, light, proportion, and restraint. Someone who thinks in decades instead of election cycles.

My eye is trained to see cities as compositions. Light, proportion, material, the relationship between one surface and the next. Some cities hold together. Others fall apart the moment you look past the postcard.

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Bruno Munari, an Italian artist and designer who spent his career questioning the line between art and everyday life, wrote in his 1966 book Design as Art that design is “planning as objectively as possible of everything that goes to make up the surroundings and atmosphere in which men live today. This atmosphere is created by all the objects produced by industry, from glasses to houses and even cities.” He wrote that nearly sixty years ago. The observation has only become more urgent.

An art director of a city would not design every building. They would define the language. They would ask simple questions. Does this belong here? Does it age well? Does it respect what already exists? Is silence sometimes better than expression?

I think about Eduardo Chillida often. He was a Basque sculptor who studied architecture in Madrid and briefly played goalkeeper for Real Sociedad before turning to art full-time. That combination of architecture, physicality, and the instinct to defend a space runs through everything he ever made. In a conversation I referenced in Slow space, fast matter, he gestured through the air and said: “This is a quick space.” Then he patted a rusted steel sculpture: “And this is a slower space.” Matter is slow, heavy space. Space is fast, light matter. The two are not opposites. They are two states of the same thing.

Cities work the same way. A building is slow space. The street between two buildings is fast space. When both are considered together, something emerges that neither could produce alone. When they are not, you get noise. Visual noise. The kind that tires you without you realizing why.

In that same piece, I wrote about niwaki, the Japanese art of cloud pruning. A pruner works over decades, removing living branches. Not the dead ones. The ones that pull attention away from the tree’s essential form. The shape is already in the tree. The work is in uncovering it. A city art director would do the same. Not adding. Revealing. Protecting what is already there and making sure what comes next does not erase it.

This is not about control. It is about care.

The fear is obvious. One taste, imposed on millions. But good art direction is never about ego. It is about creating a framework in which many voices can exist without cancelling each other out. Not dictating what gets built, but shaping the board on which everyone else plays. I once wrote about that idea in the context of AI and art: that the tool is not the artist, it is the surface that makes the game possible. The same applies to a city. The art director does not make the moves. They define the field.

That kind of attention is rare in how cities are built. Plans are made, renderings are approved, construction begins. But attention, real attention, the kind that asks whether something belongs before it is placed, is almost never part of the process. I noticed this when I traveled through Morocco for Karawan. I arrived without a plan, and the absence of expectation forced me to look. The strongest images came not from searching, but from paying attention to what was already there. Cities could use that same instinct. Not more planning. More looking.

Think of the cities that stay with you. New York, Paris, Tokyo, Kyoto. Each has a strong visual identity, often by accident, history, or sheer repetition. Imagine if that identity was consciously protected and refined, instead of slowly eroded by four-year election cycles and developers chasing the fastest return.

Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, a neuroarts researcher and a design executive at Google, describe in Your Brain on Art that people with an aesthetic mindset share four attributes: a high level of curiosity, a love of open-ended exploration, keen sensory awareness, and a drive to engage in creative activities. These are the qualities you would want in someone responsible for how a city looks and feels. Not a politician. Not a developer. Someone who sees.

Imagine the job title. Art Director of Amsterdam. Art Director of New York City. Art Director of Dubai. Not fantasy roles but serious public positions. Long-term appointments. Independent from short-term politics. Accountable to the city itself.

The benefits go beyond beauty. People take better care of places that feel intentional. A city with visual clarity creates mental calm. A shared aesthetic language builds pride and belonging. We often speak about sustainability in terms of energy and materials. Rarely in terms of visual sustainability. How long something remains meaningful before it is replaced.

Maybe the question is not whether every city needs an art director. Maybe the real question is this: can we still afford cities without one?

— Bastiaan

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Studio Notes: Conversations is a podcast shaped by curiosity. Each episode is a one-to-one conversation with someone whose work or way of seeing the world holds my attention. The guests come from different fields: art, music, neuroscience, architecture, design. The format is simple. Two people, one conversation, no script. I listen more than I lead. Some episodes are in English, others in Dutch. Every conversation comes with written summaries in both languages.

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A note on language: this episode is in Dutch. I deliberately choose to speak with each guest in their native language. Mick is Dutch, so we spoke Dutch. For my English-speaking readers: my apologies. You will find a full written summary in English below, and future episodes will alternate between the two languages.

This time I sit down with Mick Nieuwenhuis, founder of Newhouse Gallery in Amsterdam. Mick studied media, spent time in New York, went to the fashion academy in Antwerp, and launched a custom lingerie brand. Then came a burn-out. And then, almost by accident, art. First as an assistant to one artist. Then as an agent for several. Then on the floor of her first art fair, where people were pulling at her sleeve to buy work. Two years later, she opened her own gallery on the Jodenbreestraat.

Newhouse is not a white cube. It is closer to a curated living room, where art, collectible design, and fashion meet. Mick’s team comes from fashion. Her references come from fashion. Her way of building a brand around a gallery comes from fashion. And that difference is what makes Newhouse one of the most talked about young galleries in the Netherlands.

In the episode we talk about:

• From lingerie brand to burn-out to gallery: how curiosity and saying yes shaped her career

• Why her first art fair made everything click, and why others almost made her quit

• The 50/50 commission model, and how she started by doing it differently

• How she turned a booth at Big Art into an immersive world: totem poles, wood chips, red light, and a smoke machine

• A salon de rentrée in her own apartment during Amsterdam Art Week

• The Hubba Bubba Building in Zandvoort: a villa covered in bubblegum balls, listed for sale through the gallery. You buy the artwork. The house comes with it

• What the art world can learn from the fashion industry

• The physical experience of art vs. screens: “A work should never be backlit”

• Where the gallery world is heading: smaller fairs, more intimacy, fewer white walls

• Her dreams: Art Basel, Design Miami, presence in New York and Paris, and her own museum at 65

We also traded work. I gave her a piece, she gave me a sculpture by Camille de Prêtre. It is in the gallery now and it belongs here.

Listen now on Substack, YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Summary (English)

Mick Nieuwenhuis never set out to open a gallery. She studied media, spent time in New York, trained at the fashion academy in Antwerp, and ended up building a custom lingerie brand called Maison Nouvelle. Customers could design their own sets: straps, lace, colours, hooks. The brand grew, moved into retail, and then around 2020 it all became too much. She burned out and walked away from everything she had built.

What happened next was not a career change. It was more like a slow slide into something she did not see coming. She met an artist and started helping out. Other artists noticed and asked for the same thing. Before she knew it, she was representing a handful of mostly female artists and taking them to fairs she had never attended herself. Her first was PAN Amsterdam. People were grabbing her sleeve to buy work. She had no experience and no plan, but something clicked. Not every fair that followed confirmed the feeling. Some nearly made her quit. But the momentum was stronger than the doubt, and in September 2024, she opened Newhouse Gallery on the Jodenbreestraat in Amsterdam.

This conversation was recorded in my studio, and what struck me from the beginning is how differently Mick thinks about what a gallery can be. Newhouse is not a white cube. She calls it a curated living room. Paintings hang next to collectible design objects, vintage furniture sits alongside fashion pieces, and glass handbags by designer Tess van Zalinge are presented as gallery works. Her entire team comes from fashion, not from art, and that background runs through everything: the branding, the way exhibitions are staged, the instinct to think in terms of experience rather than display.

We spent a good part of the conversation on the business side. Mick started by doing things differently from most galleries, rejecting the standard 50/50 commission split in favour of a model where artists covered their own booth costs and she took a smaller percentage. It was closer to an agency than a gallery. Over time she moved toward the traditional structure, not because the old way was wrong, but because she realized she needed creative control over how the work was shown. That shift is telling. It is not really about money. It is about being able to shape the world around the work.

And she takes that literally. At Big Art, she transformed a booth into a forest of totem poles by Santiago Pani. The floor was covered in wood chips, red light hung overhead, and a smoke machine filled the space. The concept drew on Kami, the Japanese belief that spirits inhabit all things. Right next to it, Sandra K. Planken had built an underwater world from textile and glass, with coral reef sounds playing through hidden speakers. These were not booths with art on the walls. They were environments you stepped into, places that changed the way you looked at what was inside them.

Another story that stayed with me was the Hubba Bubba Building in Zandvoort: a villa that street artist Frankey covered entirely in pink bubblegum balls, a giant figure blowing them from the chimney. Mick listed it for sale through the gallery. The concept is simple: you buy the artwork, the house comes with it.

Accessibility came up repeatedly. Mick’s starting price is 590 euros. She told me about a seventeen-year-old girl who saved up for months and came to a fair specifically to buy one piece. That image stayed with me longer than any gallery statement I have ever read. When people walk in and say they do not know anything about art, Mick tells them: neither do I. There is no jargon at Newhouse, no velvet rope. During Amsterdam Art Week she hosted a salon de rentrée in her own apartment. Visitors had to email for the address. It ended up busier than most gallery openings. People sat at her kitchen table with wine, and the conversations that followed were nothing like what happens in a white-walled room with track lighting.

We talked about where the gallery world is heading and whether the traditional model still makes sense. Mick does not believe in fixed hours or permanent spaces for the sake of permanence. She believes in momentum: pop-ups, dinners, travelling shows, events that light up and then disappear. She mentioned two guys in New York who park a U-Haul truck outside an art fair and open the back as a gallery. That kind of guerrilla energy is what she thinks the industry needs more of, and I agree. There are too many fairs and most of them follow the same formula. The ones that stand out build an experience. The rest hang work on walls and wait. After four consecutive weekends of fairs, Mick knows this from the inside.

Towards the end we got into the question of physical versus digital. Mick is unequivocal: a work of art should never be backlit. She wants to light it, not screen it. She has a Samsung Frame at home and uses it only for television. When it is off, she puts it behind the couch. She represents photographers like Lotte Ekkel and Nanda Hagenaars, and she always emphasizes that their work is made in camera, without digital manipulation. She is open to AI-generated art in principle, but it has not connected with her yet.

Her ambitions are clear. Art Basel. Design Miami. A presence that moves between Amsterdam, New York, and Paris. And at sixty-five, her own museum. She visited Peggy Guggenheim’s house in Venice and decided on the spot: that is the direction.

At the end of our conversation, we exchanged work. I gave her a piece. She gave me a sculpture by Camille de Prêtre. It sits in the gallery now. It belongs there.

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Four things that stayed with me this month. None of them are connected. Except they are.

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Rick Owens Furniture

Rick Owens started in fashion. Draped fabrics, elongated silhouettes, a world built on the body. But at some point he moved to stone. Alabaster. Plywood. Black marble. And the objects he makes now look nothing like furniture.

A bench that could be a sarcophagus. A table that could be an altar. There is no gesture toward comfort. No cushion, no curve to welcome you. These are objects that refuse to explain themselves. And that refusal is what makes them impossible to ignore.

What Owens does is strip a form down until only its weight remains. No decoration. No reference to domesticity. Just mass, material, and silence. His furniture page reads like a gallery of monoliths — pieces that exist somewhere between sculpture and architecture, between function and confrontation.

There is a word for this approach: honesty. The material is what it is. The form is what it is. Nothing hides behind a finish or a clever detail. I wrote about Studio STRAF in December — a studio in Antwerp built on the same principle. And Glenn Sestig, whose work I mentioned last month, operates in the same register. These are people who trust their material enough to leave it alone.

Owens once said he wants his objects to look like they already existed and he just found them. That might be the most precise description of creative restraint I have heard.

Cloud Pruning

Niwaki is the Japanese art of training trees. Not into topiary shapes. Not hedges trimmed to look like animals or geometric forms. Niwaki is about revealing a tree’s essential structure by removing everything that obscures it.

The pruner works over years. Sometimes decades. Each season, a few branches are removed. Not the dead ones. The living ones that pull attention away from the core form. The goal is not to impose a shape. The shape is already in the tree. The work is in uncovering it.

What makes this fascinating is the patience. A niwaki master does not finish a tree. The tree is never finished. It is an ongoing negotiation between growth and restraint, between what the tree wants to become and what the pruner sees it could be.

Rick Rubin talks about something similar when he describes the creative process as receiving rather than manufacturing. The idea that the work already exists somewhere and your job is to clear the path toward it. Cloud pruning makes that idea physical. You can stand in front of it and see what decades of careful removal look like.

There is a lesson in that for anyone who edits. Photographs, text, music, film. The best edit is not the cleverest cut. It is the one that reveals what was already true.

Eduardo Chillida — Médecins du Monde

In 1992, Eduardo Chillida made a print for Médecins du Monde. Doctors of the World. The French humanitarian medical network founded in 1980 that now operates in over 70 countries, providing care in conflict zones, refugee camps, and communities where health systems have collapsed. For their cause, Chillida made an etching with embossing. Black ink on white paper. A form that seems to both hold and release space at the same time.

It is a large work. 120 by 160 centimeters. And it stopped me completely.

Chillida was Basque. He studied architecture in Madrid, then briefly played goalkeeper for Real Sociedad before turning to art full-time. That combination of architecture, physicality, and the instinct to defend a space runs through everything he ever made.

He spent his life exploring one question: what is the relationship between mass and void? Not as opposites, but as two states of the same thing. In a 1986 interview with the LA Times, he gestured through the air and said: “This is a quick space.” Then he patted a rusted steel sculpture: “And this is a slower space.” In their teachers’ notes on Chillida, Hauser & Wirth summarize his philosophy: “Matter is slow, heavy space, and space is fast, light matter.”

That reframes everything. The black forms in the Médecins du Monde print are not sitting on white paper. They are creating the white space around them. The void is not absence. It is the other half of the form.

For anyone who works in black and white, in any medium. This hits close. What you leave out is not empty. It is active. It is doing as much work as the darkest mark on the page. Olafur Eliasson reduces experiences to their essential elements. Chillida does something similar, but with more gravity. Literally. His sculptures weigh tons. And yet they feel like they are about air.

Vittorio Sella — The Shot of Time

In 1882, a 23-year-old Italian made the first winter ascent of the Matterhorn. He carried a large-format camera with him. The plates were up to 30×40 centimeters. The conditions were brutal. The photographs were extraordinary.

His name was Vittorio Sella. Over the next four decades, he would photograph mountains on five continents: the Caucasus, Alaska, the Himalayas, the Karakoram, the Ruwenzori in East Africa. Always with the same commitment to large-format precision under impossible circumstances.

Ansel Adams, no stranger to mountains himself, wrote about Sella in 1946: “A reverent and intelligent artist.” He described being “amazed by the mood of calmness and perfection pervading all of Sella’s photographs.” Calmness. Made at altitude. In freezing temperatures. With glass plates.

But the real story is what happened after. The Fondazione Sella in Biella, Italy, now holds approximately one million photographs. Glass plates, prints, negatives. An entire lifetime of looking, preserved in wooden drawers and climate-controlled rooms. Photographer Giulio Favotto was invited to photograph the archive itself for a new book: The Shot of Time: Vittorio Sella, the Photographer and His Archive. I came across it at the MIA Photo Fair in Milan this March and spent a while talking with Favotto about the project. That conversation stayed with me longer than most things at the fair.

What he captured is not the spectacular mountain images. It is the infrastructure. The shelves, the containers, the physical weight of a practice sustained over an entire life. And that might be more powerful than any single summit photograph. Because it shows what commitment actually looks like when the cameras are off and the expeditions are over.

There is something Frederick Buyckx understood too, with Horse Head. The idea that a body of work only becomes what it is through years of returning. Sella returned to the mountains for forty years. The archive is proof.

A furniture maker who strips every unnecessary line. A gardener who reveals a tree by taking branches away. A sculptor who treated void as material. A photographer whose archive outlived him by a century.

Four different disciplines. One shared instinct: the power is not in what you add. It is in what you sustain, refine, and, in the right places, remove.

— Bastiaan

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I have spent years building systems to hold on to what passes through. Notebooks, daily logs, archives of references and highlights. They work, to a point. But the images I am most proud of did not come from any system. They came from something I could not hold on to.

Rick Rubin writes in The Creative Act: “We begin with everything: everything seen, everything done, everything thought, everything felt, everything imagined, everything forgotten.” The word that stays with me is forgotten. Not remembered. Not archived. Forgotten.

I think the strongest work does not come from what you planned to capture. It comes from what you could not forget. And two years ago, something happened that proved it.

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Here is what stayed with me.

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Glenn Sestig — The Stuff That Surrounds

The Wallpaper\ series The Stuff That Surrounds* visited Belgian architect Glenn Sestig in his home in Ghent — a brutalist house designed by Ivan Van Mossevelde in 1972, bought and restored by Sestig in 2017. What you see inside is not decoration. Every object is a position. Materials are chosen the way you choose words: precisely, without excess.

What struck me is how the house is an extension of his practice. Not a showroom. A way of living that follows the same logic as the work. Architecture, design, and daily life treated as one continuous sentence.

I noticed the same thing last December when I wrote about Studio STRAF — that restraint is not a style, it is a mindset. Sestig takes it one step further: he lives inside it.

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Paul Rosolie — Mother of God

Paul Rosolie was eighteen when he first walked alone into the Madre de Dios region of Peru — one of the most biodiverse and inaccessible places on Earth. Mother of God is the book that came out of years of returning. Giant anacondas, isolated tribes, jaguars, gold miners, and a forest that keeps most people out.

What I took from this book is not the adventure. It is the commitment behind it. Rosolie did not visit once. He kept going back. He learned the jungle on its own terms, not his. That is a different kind of discipline — not the discipline of control, but the discipline of surrender.

It reminded me of what I wrote in the Deep Dive on Karawan earlier this year: the places that change you are the ones you return to. You do not take them. They take you, slowly, over time.

Jane Goodall called it “an extraordinary book.” I would not argue with that.

Find it on Goodreads

Ikkō Narahara

I found Narahara through a video by the channel Developing Tank, and I have not been able to stop thinking about him since. He was born in Japan in 1931, co-founded the photography collective VIVO in 1957, and spent the next six decades photographing prisons, monasteries, Venice, the American Southwest, Apollo launches, and eventually the inside of his own body using X-rays and isotope photography.

What defines his work is not a subject but a question: what does photography have to do with time, with death, and with the experience of being alive? Each project was a different attempt at the same answer. He wrote once that photographs carry within themselves “a nostalgia for cosmic memories.”

That sentence has been with me for weeks. It connects to something I have been thinking about with HENRO — how a pilgrimage route in Japan became not just a project, but a reckoning with time. Narahara spent his entire career asking the same thing with a camera. That kind of consistency feels rare.

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Jared Thomas Tapy — Why Curiosity Is the Most Important Skill Set

The Creative Connection

Why Curiosity Is the Most Important Skill Set

Curiosity didn’t vanish in a blaze of controversy or get publicly canceled in a comment section. It didn’t go out swinging. It just… stopped showing up. Quietly. Politely. Like someone who realized halfway through the party that no one was actually listening anymore. One day it was there, asking inconvenient questions, slowing things down, making everyo…

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3 months ago · 13 likes · 1 comment · Jared Thomas Tapy

I write about curiosity often. I explored it in The Shape of Curiosity and in conversations and in how I try to structure my days. If I had to name the single most important character trait for a creative person — not talent, not discipline, not vision — it would be curiosity.

So when I came across this essay by in his Substack The Creative Connection, it felt like reading something I had been trying to say for years. His argument is that curiosity is not a personality trait. It is a discipline — something you practice, protect, and develop deliberately. And that the online economy is systematically destroying it: rewarding certainty, speed, and repetition while leaving no room for genuine exploration or doubt.

I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Read the essay

Frederik Buyckx — Horse Head

Horse Head is a photobook by Belgian photographer Frederik Buyckx, documenting the lives of semi-nomadic herders in Kyrgyzstan. He made seven trips across three years. He rode with the herders on horseback. He built a quiet relationship without sharing a language. He photographed people living at altitude, in deep winter, in near-total isolation — and he did it without captions, without explanation.

The book demands that you learn to look. Black-and-white, slow, cold, and honest. Bichromy printing, Swiss binding, deliberate pacing. Nothing is rushed. Everything earns its place.

What I recognize in Buyckx’s approach is what I wrote about Stephan Vanfleteren last December: “This is not a fleeting idea. It is work that demanded time, and time was given.” Horse Head is the same conviction, in a different landscape. And it rhymes with Rosolie’s Amazon, and with Narahara’s decades-long meditation on the same questions. Some things only reveal themselves to those who keep showing up.

Find it at Hannibal Books

Five things that have stayed with me this month. Each one, in its own way, about going further than planned and staying longer than expected.

What has stayed with you? I would love to hear.

More soon.

— Bastiaan

If you want to go deeper into the thinking behind the work — the process, the doubt, the choices — that conversation continues in the paid edition.

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Books will ship out as of Monday the 30th

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In March 2024, my brother and I travelled to Shikoku, Japan. We brought bicycles and cameras. We did not bring a plan.

Shikoku is home to one of the oldest pilgrimage routes in the world — 88 Buddhist temples connected by more than 1,200 kilometres of mountain roads, forest paths, and coastal stretches. The route has been walked since 815. People keep returning to it, looking for something they cannot name in advance.

PREORDER HERE

We were not pilgrims in the traditional sense. But somewhere along the way, the journey became something I had not expected. A rhythm took hold — wake, pack, move, arrive, rest, repeat. In that rhythm, my usual way of seeing stopped working. The instincts I had built over years felt like the wrong instrument for this particular road.

Something shifted around the halfway point. I started looking differently. Not at the obvious. Not at the decisive moment. At what was just before or just after it. The images that came back are fragments. More like memory than fact.

The book collects this work and it will be presented at the opening on March 27 — the first time this project is shown publicly.

PREORDER HERE

Opening & Book Launch — Friday, March 27

16:00–19:00 · Official moment: 17:00

Hazenkoog 9 · 1822 BS Alkmaar, Netherlands

RSVP is still open. [Reserve your spot →] RSVP

The exhibition will remain on view in my studio in the days that follow. If you cannot make the opening, you are welcome to visit during one of the viewing moments below. Registration is required for all dates.

Weekend viewing — Saturday March 28 & Sunday March 29

Sat 11:00–15:00 · Sun 13:00–17:00

[Register →] RSVP

Week viewing — March 31 to April 3

Daily 13:00–17:00

[Register →] RSVP

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Ritual of Shapes — Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona

The exhibition at Alzueta Gallery closed on March 7. I want to say something about the response it received: the warmth and attention from visitors and collectors in Spain meant more than I expected.

I also want to acknowledge the gallery team specifically. The way they work is rare — professional, attentive, and genuinely caring. It made the whole experience of showing work there a good one.

For collectors in Spain who are interested in the work or have questions about availability:

Alzueta Gallery Barcelona Turó

C/ Josep Bertrand, 3 — 08021 Barcelona

alzuetagallery.com

Mon–Fri: 9:00–14:00 and 16:00–19:00

MC2 Gallery at MIA Photo Fair, Milan

From March 19 to 22, I will be showing work at MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas in Milan, together with MC2 Gallery. This is the fair’s 15th edition — Italy’s most important fair for fine art photography. The theme this year is Metamorphosis.

We are in the Main Section, Stand E 022, at Superstudio Più, Via Tortona 27.

This is my second collaboration with MC2, following our debut at ArtVerona last October. The gallery, founded in Milan in 2009, works at the intersection of historical and contemporary photography. I’m looking forward to being in Italy and to showing the work in this context.

If you are in Milan that week, you are welcome. For enquiries please contact vincenzo.maccarone@mc2.gallery

HENRO — Studio Woudt, Alkmaar

On March 27, the first exhibition of HENRO opens at my studio and gallery in Alkmaar. The opening also marks the release of the book, published by 1605 Collective.

HENRO began as a journey. In March 2024, my brother and I cycled the Shikoku Henro pilgrimage route in Japan — more than 1,200 kilometres, 88 Buddhist temples, through mountains, forests, and coastal roads. The images that came out of that journey are not documentation. They are fragments: closer to memory than to record.

The book will be available online shortly after the opening.

You are welcome to join on one of the following dates. Each session is by RSVP.

Friday, March 27 — Opening & Book Launch

16:00–19:00 · Official moment: 17:00

RSVP →

Weekend viewing — Saturday March 28 & Sunday March 29

Sat 11:00–15:00 · Sun 13:00–17:00

RSVP →

Week viewing — March 31 to April 3

Daily 13:00–17:00

RSVP →

After these dates, the exhibition can be visited by appointment until October. Contact Janneke at janneke@bastiaanwoudt.com.

If this resonated, feel free to pass it along.

His passing came after a very short and intense period. Sudden in its speed. Heavy in its impact.

His name was Jelmar van Belle.

If there is such a thing as a soul companion, he was that. We traveled the world together. We shared a craft — me as a photographer, he as a filmmaker. But beyond the work, beyond the images and the films, he was simply a beautiful human being. Always calm. Always thoughtful. Always positive in a way that was contagious without ever being loud.

On the invitation to his farewell, someone wrote words I want to quote here:

“Jelmar, a storyteller, a connoisseur, always caring for others. He knew when to wait, when to move, and when to stay, until the light faded.”

That describes him better than I ever could.

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We first worked together in Paris. Then New York. Then Morocco — two weeks in a car together, driving from Marrakesh through the High Atlas into the Sahara. He filmed everything. Not just the landscapes or the photographs I was making, but the doubt, the frustration, the moments where it wasn’t working and I didn’t know why. He had an instinct for what was real. He never imposed a story. He waited for one to appear.

The film he made from that trip is one of the most honest documents of how I work. You can watch it here. It’s his film, not mine. That’s how I still think of it.

Over the years he made many more films — about my studio, my process, the world I work in. They live here. When I watch them now, I hear his thinking in every edit, every cut, every choice about what to leave in and what to let go. If you want to see the full breadth of what he made, his work is at jelmarvanbelle.nl.

In 2020 we sat down together for a podcast conversation. We talked about how we met, about the Morocco trip, about what it means to make work that feels like your own. But the part I keep returning to now is when he talked about his illness.

He had leukemia at fourteen. Twice. An anonymous bone marrow donor saved his life. And from that point on, he said, everything felt like bonus time. He was working on a personal documentary — about gratitude, about the search for the person who gave him those extra years. He wanted to make a film about what it feels like to owe your life to a stranger you will never know.

He never got to finish it.

I think of the two weeks we spent driving through California. Ten hours a day in the same car. Not a single moment of awkward silence. Only exchange. Only curiosity. Only presence.

That is rare. Genuinely rare.

For ten years I had the privilege of calling him my friend. I will carry our adventures and our conversations with me for the rest of my life. I will miss him for the rest of my life.

And yet — somewhere beyond this visible world — I am certain our paths will cross again. In another life. In another moment. In another place.

My heart goes out to his dear girlfriend Maaike, to his family, his parents and brothers, and to everyone who stood close to him, or whose path he crossed.

Rest in peace, my friend.

@jelmarvanbelle — 05-12-1984 – 20-02-2026

It is subtle. I still do my work. I still make decisions. But something shifts. I am not just making images. I am also showing that I am making images. There is a performance layered into the process, and it feels so natural that I almost do not notice it.

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On my own set, with no one around, the experience is different. There is no room to perform for. There is only the frame, the light, and whatever is unfolding in front of me. My attention moves differently. It stays closer. It does not bounce between what I see and how I might be seen.

I do not think the images suffer on a larger set. The work still holds. But the space inside my head is different. And over time, I have started to pay attention to that difference.

There is a distinction between self-awareness and self-consciousness that I think about often. They sound similar. They are not.

Self-awareness means noticing what is happening inside you while you work. Doubt showing up. Ambition pulling you forward. Fear slowing you down. Intuition pointing somewhere you did not plan to go. You observe these things without correcting them. You let them be. And from that openness, work can emerge that is honest, because it does not need to prove anything. It is allowed to simply exist.

Self-consciousness is different. It places an audience inside your mind before anyone has seen the work. You feel watched while you are still in the act of making. The focus shifts from what you are exploring to how it might be received. You start editing yourself too early. Not because the direction is wrong, but because it might be misunderstood. The work becomes a reaction instead of an action.

What follows is a deeper, more personal reflection on both states and what they ask of you as a maker. This section is available to paid subscribers.

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If you’d like to be there: you’re welcome. Attendance requires an RSVP — see below.

Hazenkoog 9 · 1822 BS Alkmaar

In March 2024, my brother and I travelled to the Japanese island of Shikoku. We brought our bicycles and cameras. We did not bring a plan.

Shikoku is home to one of the oldest pilgrimage routes in the world — the Henro. A path connecting 88 Buddhist temples across mountains, forests, and coastal roads. More than 1,200 kilometres. The route was first walked by the Buddhist priest Kūkai in 815. Since then, people have been returning to it, in search of something they can rarely name in advance.

We were not pilgrims in the traditional sense. But somewhere along the way, the journey became something I had not expected. Not a trip. Not a project. A practice.

The days started to look the same. Wake. Pack. Move. Arrive. Rest. Repeat. In that rhythm, something cleared — and the camera became harder to use. Not technically. But the usual way of seeing stopped working. The instincts I had built over years felt like the wrong tool for this particular road.

Somewhere around the halfway point, something shifted. I started looking differently. Not at the obvious. Not at the moment. At what was just before or just after it. That change followed me into the edit. Images I would have dismissed, I kept. Images I would have chosen, I let go.

What came back is not what I would have made before this journey. It is a different visual language — a new way of presenting work, and a new approach to editions and pricing. The images are fragments. More like memory than fact. Like something that happened just before waking up.

The works are printed using piezography on Japanese paper — Haini Kozo and Awagami. Each in a limited edition of 7.

The book HENRO, published by 1605 Collective, will be presented on the opening evening. Pre-order opens on 20 March — more on that in a separate newsletter coming soon.

Friday, March 27 — Opening & Book Launch

16:00–19:00 · Official moment: 17:00

RSVP →

Weekend viewing — Saturday March 28 & Sunday March 29

Sat 11:00–15:00 · Sun 13:00–17:00

RSVP →

Week viewing — March 31 to April 3

Daily 13:00–17:00

RSVP →

I look forward to welcoming you.

— Bastiaan

The first five questions are available to everyone. The full set of ten questions and answers is reserved for paid subscribers. I hope this format provides an open glimpse as well as a deeper layer for those who want to explore further.

1. What is your favorite camera and lens for your work?

My favorite camera brand is Fujifilm. I switched to Fujifilm when they released the GFX, a medium-format camera that met my needs perfectly and delivered the same quality I had experienced with my Phase One system.

In terms of focal length, I mostly work with 80mm and 120mm lenses in medium format.

2. Why do you do what you do?

Creating images and being creative every day—whether that’s taking photographs, making books, or producing videos—gives me so much energy that I want to keep doing it for the rest of my life.

The magical moment of turning nothing into something continues to fascinate me. That act of creation keeps me engaged and curious, and I expect it will stay with me until the very end.

3. Who are your biggest influences, and who are your favorite photographers at the moment?

When I first started photographing, my biggest influences were Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Bill Brandt, and Paolo Roversi, and they still influence me to a certain extent today. They are photographers who changed the course of photography and fashion imagery and were successful in presenting their work as art. I still enjoy looking at their dynamic sense of composition and analog aesthetic.

In recent years, I have found myself looking more and more to other forms of art for inspiration, especially painting and architecture. I express my creativity through photography, but that doesn’t mean I need to be inspired only by photographers. I often prefer to draw inspiration from different art forms and translate those ideas back into photography.

4. At what point in your creative journey did you realize that you had “made it”?

I don’t think you ever truly feel like you’ve “made it,” and that’s probably a good thing. There’s always a sense that you’re still on your way, still learning, experimenting, and trying new things.

If the question is about recognition, a turning point for me was getting my first gallery show. That moment brings acknowledgment from different sources: magazines, curators, and institutions that want to exhibit your work. It shows that your work is strong enough to exist at that level.

However, I have never felt that I have arrived or made it. The moment you feel that way suggests an ending. For me, there is no endpoint. You keep evolving and improving. In that sense, I don’t feel like I’ve made it, and I don’t expect that I ever will.

5. Do models have creative input when collaborating, or do they follow certain cues?

I enjoy working with models who contribute creatively and approach the shoot as a collaboration. It is important to me that we arrive at something together. I am not the type of photographer who simply dictates what needs to be done and insists that there is only one way to do it.

I am always open to suggestions and different perspectives. While I usually know what I’m looking for, I like to leave room for coincidence and the contributions of those around me. This includes the entire team: makeup, styling, and the model.

I especially appreciate it when a model shares her own ideas because those moments often lead to results I could not have imagined beforehand.

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The exhibition marks the world premiere of the project and coincides with the release of the book HENRO, published on the same date.

HENRO is the result of a two year process, beginning with a pilgrimage across Japan and ending with a completely new body of work, presentation, and publication. A project shaped by movement and time.

More details on the exhibition, editions, and availability will follow soon. Scrol down for a sneak preview of some works.

Behind HENRO

HENRO began as a journey, not a project.

My brother and I followed the Shikoku Henro pilgrimage route in Japan, which connects eighty-eight temples across the island of Shikoku. We completed the entire journey by bicycle. That choice defined everything. Cycling created a rhythm that sat between speed and stillness. It was fast enough to cover distance but slow enough to remain exposed to the weather, terrain, fatigue, and chance encounters.

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This month alone, I finished six books. They covered different subjects, featured different voices, and took me to different worlds. But only a few have really stayed with me.

The two books below made the deepest impression. In very different ways, they both deal with perception, awareness, and how we relate to the world around us. One deals with the fear of losing sight, and the other deals with the practice of going inward to see more clearly.

This month’s other inspirations seem to naturally orbit around that same theme. How we look. How we observe. How we create meaning through form, rhythm, space, sound, and image.

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Book: De blinde fotograaf by Hannes Wallrafen

De Blinde Fotograaf tells the story of a photographer who gradually loses his sight and must relearn how to live, move, and relate to the world without vision. The book is both a personal account and a practical reflection on what it truly means to be blind in a society built around sight.

I was drawn to this book for a very simple reason. Losing my sight is my greatest fear. Photography is how I navigate the world.

It’s how I see, think, and understand. The idea of losing that ability is terrifying. Perhaps that fear is exactly why I felt compelled to read this book.

De Blinde Fotograaf is a Dutch book, and unfortunately, there is no English translation available. It’s a shame because the insights it offers feel universal.

The book is not just about losing your sight. It is about what comes after. About learning how to move through a world that is no longer built for the way you perceive it. Wallrafen writes with clarity, humor, and an honesty that never turns dramatic.

It offers real insight into what blindness means. The logistics. The constant adjustments. The mental discipline it requires. It is confronting, yes, but also grounding. Reading it made me more aware of how blind people move through daily life, and how much we take visual autonomy for granted.

This quote stayed with me:

“I even burst out laughing once when I had crossed a street under construction and accidentally ended up in a pit as deep as a man is tall. Anyone who, as a blind person, constantly worries about all the terrible things that might happen, would be better off staying behind the geraniums.”

Fear is present, but so is resilience.

Book: Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch

It’s one of those books I return to again and again. Not because it provides answers, but because it prompts thought-provoking questions. It’s about creativity. About ideas. About consciousness. It emphasizes the importance of protecting the space where ideas can surface.

Lynch discusses meditation not as a lifestyle accessory but as a practical tool. It’s a way to access deeper layers of thought. It’s a way to generate better ideas.

Some lines continue to resonate:

“Stay true to yourself. Let your voice ring out, and don’t let anybody fiddle with it. Never turn down a good idea, but never take a bad idea. And meditate.”

“The more the artist is suffering, the less creative he is going to be.”

“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.”

And the one that stays closest to how I think about making work:

“A film should stand on its own. It’s absurd if a filmmaker needs to say what a film means in words. The world in the film is a created one, and people sometimes love going into that world. For them that world is real. And if people find out certain things about how something was done, or how this means this or that means that, the next time they see the film, these things enter into the experience. And then the film becomes different. I think it’s so precious and important to maintain that world and not say certain things that could break the experience. You don’t need anything outside of the work.”

Architecture: Zicatela House by Ludwig Godefroy and Emmanuel Picault

Lately, I’ve become increasingly drawn to Mexican architecture. Zicatela House feels both ancient and contemporary. Its design is inspired by Aztec temples and expressed through monolithic concrete forms. The forms are heavy and grounded. Steps, pools, and bridges. It’s architecture that feels carved rather than constructed. What makes it work for me is the balance. The brutality of concrete is softened by dark wood. The warmth introduced through interior design choices. It never becomes cold.

It’s brutalism with soul.

Art : Antonio González

(Valencia, Spain, 1974) is an abstract painter and a colleague at the Alzueta Gallery.

I love his work for its restraint. His pieces consist of dots, repetition, and minimal gestures that somehow carry weight. His work is quiet, yet never empty. There is confidence in knowing when to stop. That discipline shows.

Music: St. Germain — “Rose Rouge”

This track was on repeat while I walked through Barcelona at the end of January. The sun was on my face, and I had no rush. I was just moving.

An old one. But it’s still incredibly strong. It carries a mood that doesn’t age.

Photography: Dovima with Elephants by Richard Avedon

Some images stay with you forever. This is one of them.

Taken in 1955 at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, “Dovima with Elephants” was originally published in a Paris fashion story for Harper’s Bazaar. Avedon once described fashion photography as “a vacation from life,” and this image embodies that sentiment.

He first saw the elephants standing beneath a vast skylight. Then came the dress: It was the first design for Dior by nineteen-year-old Yves Saint Laurent. Everything aligned to create something surreal.

Dovima stands poised and fearless. Her elegant form mirrored the elephants’ curves. There is tension, grace, and control. It’s a carefully improvised dream image.

Source

See you next month for more inspiration

— Bastiaan

Apart from how I edit my photographs, this is by far the most common question I receive. How do you get a gallery? I hear it at openings, receive it in emails, and read it in messages from people who have been following my work for years. Sometimes it comes from artists who are just starting out; other times, it comes from artists who are already selling work but feel stuck at a certain point.

The question is almost never technical. It conveys expectation and doubt, as well as the idea that being in a gallery is a threshold you need to cross to be taken seriously. I recognize that feeling. I have been there myself.

What makes this question difficult is that there is no single answer. There are patterns and mistakes that repeat themselves. There are also things I wish someone had told me earlier and without promises. Some of those lessons were reassuring. Others were uncomfortable. A few fundamentally changed the way I look at representation, ambition, and my responsibility as an artist.

This text is not a guide. It is more like a conversation. It’s the kind of conversation you have at the kitchen table when you have time to be honest about what works, what doesn’t, and why some doors stay closed longer than expected.

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I’m very grateful to share that I will be participating in Zona Maco 2026 in Mexico City, together with In the Gallery. This marks the first time my work will be presented at the most important art fair in Latin America, and also the first time I am collaborating with this gallery.

We will be presenting brand new works from 2026. Being part of Zona Maco feels like a meaningful step, not only because of the scale and importance of the fair, but also because of the context in which the work will be shown. The fair takes place from 4 to 8 February 2026 at Centro Citibanamex, Av. del Conscripto 311, Lomas de Sotelo, Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City. I’m thankful for the opportunity to show my work on this platform and for the trust of In the Gallery.

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Henro — Save the Date

Later this year, I will release Henro, a project I photographed in Japan two years ago. The project took almost two years to complete, not only because of the work itself, but also because I chose to rethink every aspect of it. I developed the presentation, paper, editions, and book from scratch.

Henro carries my familiar visual signature, but it also moves into a new visual language for me. It’s a project I’m deeply proud of.

The world premiere of the project and book will take place on March 27, 2026, at the gallery in Alkmaar. More information about Henro will be shared later this month.

Tinotenda: 10-Year Anniversary

This year marks ten years of our collaboration with Tinotenda. In a previous newsletter, I shared a personal letter I wrote to her reflecting on our decade of collaboration. If you haven’t read it yet, it provides important context for what this collaboration has meant to me.

The works resulting from the anniversary shoot are now available across all galleries. The response from collectors and followers worldwide has been strong and encouraging. It’s reassuring to see how this body of work continues to resonate.

New Work – Revolve

A new work titled Revolve is currently on view in XL format at Alzueta Gallery Barcelona – Park Turó. I saw the work myself during the opening at the end of January, and it reminded me why scale matters. Seeing Revolve in its largest format made me fall in love with the piece all over again.

The work is available, and in this size it fully reveals its physical presence and intensity.

She became a central presence in my work not because of an assigned role but because of what she brought to it. Her calm strength, her clarity, and her ability to hold space. Over time, we developed a shared visual language built on trust, intuition, and restraint. Many of our sessions unfold with very few words. The images emerge from an understanding that deepened quietly year after year.

Together, we created some of the most recognizable works in my archive: Portraits, silhouettes, and studies of the human form that balance precision and emotion. Our first publication, Tino, marked an important moment in our journey together. It was not a conclusion, but rather a confirmation of what sustained collaboration can yield when given time.

In 2025, we will celebrate ten years of working together with a new body of work. These images will be presented for the first time at the Masters Expo in Amsterdam and will be featured in select exhibitions worldwide throughout the year. This new chapter reflects on what has been built while remaining open to what lies ahead.

At its core, this collaboration is not about repetition or nostalgia. It is about continuity. It is about returning to the same frame and questions and discovering something new.

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A more personal layer:

What you have read so far is only the visible part of this anniversary. It is the work as it appears in exhibitions, books, and public spaces.

Below this point, the story shifts.

Here, I share a broader selection of images from the new body of work, including pieces that have never been shown before. Alongside these images, I have included a personal letter that I wrote to Tinotenda. It is a reflection on our collaboration, on trust, agency, and on moving beyond the traditional idea of the muse.

This section of the newsletter moves away from context and enters the space where the work was created.

The following section is available to paid subscribers.

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A series of conversations guided by curiosity. No fixed format, no set schedule. Each episode starts with an encounter that feels worth exploring.

For the second episode, I sit down with Zeus Tipado, a neuroscientist at Maastricht University researching altered states of consciousness. Zeus works at the intersection of science and experience, focusing on psychedelics, perception, and the brain. His research includes DMT, DMXE, and the use of virtual reality to study how consciousness is constructed in real time.

We talk about creativity and neuroscience, and how altered states can disrupt habitual patterns of thinking. We explore why psychedelics often lead to new perspectives, how memory and emotion shape perception, and why many artists and scientists throughout history have been drawn to these states.

A large part of the conversation focuses on DMXE, a relatively new compound. I share my own experience taking part in one of Zeus’ sessions, and how that experience directly informed a new body of work. We discuss sensory environments, inward journeys, and states that are less about visual spectacle and more about depth, memory, and structure.

We also touch on microdosing, placebo, and belief, and Zeus explains why expectation may play a larger role than most people assume. Finally, we dive into his ongoing DMT research, including experiments that combine psychedelics with virtual reality to better understand how the brain generates reality.

Episode two of the Studio Notes podcast is now live.

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Art Book

Transcripts of a Sea by Stephan Vanfleteren

This book works for me on several levels.

I have known Stefan for a long time. The first artwork I ever bought was from him. I once had a conversation with him in my car when I was just starting out as a photographer. Those moments stay with you.

I have always seen him as a role model. As a person, but above all, as an artist. Even now, I consider him to be the best portrait photographer in the world. For that reason, this book matters.

Transcripts of a Sea showcases the full scope of his work. It is not just a portrait book, a landscape book, or a detour. It’s a clear statement that photographers shouldn’t be confined to categories. A photographer should be able to photograph everything: People, nature, stillness, force, and vulnerability. They all belong together.

This book documents a wild sea where beauty and threat coexist. Its strength lies not only in the images themselves, but also in the dedication behind them. The commitment required to complete this project is evident on every page. This is not a fleeting idea. It is work that demanded time, and time was given.

For me, this book highlights something essential. It’s not about what you photograph, but how broadly and honestly you dare to look.

I absolutely recommend it.

Music

Black Mesa by Biosphere

Inspired by the atmosphere of the American Southwest, the album feels slow and stripped back. The music feels slow and stripped back, as if shaped by time rather than composed traditionally. Nothing forces itself forward. It simply sits there and lets you stay with it.

What I like about this record is its restraint. It leaves space. Space to think, work, and let things unfold without pressure.

Throughout the album, you hear fragments of dialogue sampled from the 1936 film The Petrified Forest. Voices from another time appear and disappear, never forming a narrative. They’re more like distant echoes that add a human layer to the sound.

This is music that supported my work rather than interrupted it. It played on repeat for a reason.

Also, the music video is pretty awesome.

Architecture and Design

Studio STRAF

What I love about Studio STRAF is their restraint. They use materials in an honest and confident way. Nothing is polished just to impress. Wood, stone, plaster, and metal are allowed to exist as they are.

Their minimalism is a mindset, not just a look. Spaces are reduced yet never feel empty. Everything feels deliberate. The architecture, interior, and furniture speak the same language, creating a strong sense of coherence. Every element feels in the right place; nothing is excessive or out of place. There is a clear sense that each decision strengthens the whole rather than standing alone.

Book

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

This was an incredible book to read.

As mentioned in my previous newsletter, Stoicism is something I want to dive deeper into, and this felt like the best possible starting point. The four virtues of Stoicism, wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance, form a quiet but steady foundation throughout the text.

What struck me most is how contemporary it feels. It is almost unreal to think these reflections were written by a Roman emperor nearly two thousand years ago. The thoughts feel recent and direct. It is confronting, in a good way, to realize that people were already thinking about the same questions back then. In essence, not much has changed.

Like with any book, not every passage applies. But I have never highlighted as much in a book as I did in this one. One passage in particular stayed with me:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

For me, this sentence captures the core of Stoicism. Not the circumstances themselves, but our judgment of them is what affects us. And that judgment is something we can change.

I read the Dutch edition, Overpeinzingen, and it is high on my list to read it again in English later this year.

Film/Stand-up

The Unstoppable by Dave Chappelle

Chappelle has long been one of my favorite comedians.

His sharp tongue, his ability to call things as they are, and his clear view of the world set him apart. He observes without hesitation, turning his observations into humor that cuts deep while always maintaining control. His shows feel complete—not a collection of jokes, but a coherent whole.

Watching The Unstoppable was a good way to reflect on the past year. It provided an opportunity to reflect, question, and end the year with perspective and a smile.

— Bastiaan

In early 2026, I will present a new solo exhibition titled Ritual of Shapes at the Alzueta Gallery in Barcelona. The exhibition will bring together works developed through a long, concentrated process with a strong focus on my ten-year collaboration with Tinotenda.

Rather than revisiting the past, the works extend an existing visual language. Images from the archive were revisited and reworked not to repeat what already exists but to carry that shared history forward with a renewed perspective. Alongside these pieces, the exhibition includes photographs made years ago that were deliberately held back and are now being released as part of a broader reflection on continuity, restraint, and evolution.

“Ritual of Shapes” will be on view

January 29 to March 7, 2026

at Alzueta Gallery Barcelona Turó (C/ Josep Bertrand, 3, 08021 Barcelona).

The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

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Masters Expo

I look back on my participation in the Masters Expo in Amsterdam last December with gratitude. It meant a lot to present my work in this setting and collaborate with the Masters Expo team.

Special thanks to Masters Magazine for the feature and interview and for showcasing the new series I shot with Tinotenda, which became a central part of the magazine.

I’m grateful to everyone behind the scenes, especially the people who visited the fair. And especially to those who chose to purchase a piece of art. It never feels ordinary when someone decides to live with an image and give it a permanent place in their home to return to day after day.

I look forward to welcoming many of you into the new year and, hopefully, into the studio in Alkmaar as well.

Rhythm: Cover Carlos (Final Copies)

We currently have a limited number of copies of Rhythm, Cover Carlos available via 1605 Collective.

Once this edition sells out, it will not be reprinted. This year, I will focus on working on a new overview book, which will make Rhythm part of a closed chapter within the publication history.

If you’ve been considering adding this book to your collection, now is the time. Only a few copies remain, and they are available on a first-come, first-served basis. I recommend ordering your copy this month if you’d like to receive it soon.

New Work: Floret

I’m introducing a new piece titled Floret. It is currently available in two formats. There is an edition of ten in 90 x 120 cm and an XL edition of three in 135 x 180 cm.

Floret was shown for the first time during Masters Expo and has already sold multiple times. The response from collectors has been strong, and the work has proven to be in high demand.

Given the limited editions and existing interest, it’s likely that this work will sell out soon.

If you’re interested, please reply directly to this email. We’ll gladly connect you with the appropriate gallery partner in your region. For collectors based in the Netherlands, we can show you the work directly at our studio in Alkmaar.