THE RAREKIEK André Bergmans

The RPS Benelux Chapter EVENT

The ’Rarekiek’

We had a full house for this occasion. Our audience comes from far and wide and this evening we had an international audience from France, Belgium, UK and The Netherlands

© Theo Mastenbroek - Metamorfose

Photo club the ‘Rarekiek’ (Netherlands -

Goeree Overflakkee) and the RPS Benelux Chapter have some members in common and so it happened that some of our RPS members presented to them and now it was time for a return visit. Four of their distinguished photographers, Magda Korthals, Jaap Peeman, Anne-Marie Vermaat and Theo Mastenbroek were lined up to present their work.

We had a full house for this occasion. Our audience comes from far and wide and this evening we had an international audience from France, Belgium, UK and The Netherlands.

An impression and introduction

Magda Korthals considers herself to be at the beginning of her photographic journey but if this is the beginning, we are going to see some impressive imaging in the future. She showed a wide variety of work in terms of genre, subject matter and in-camera and postprocessing techniques - work that has already gained distinctions in exhibitions and competitions. She wants to develop herself into documentary work but I consider her portraits just as strong. As a result of Corona restrictions, she explored some story-telling still-life photography.

© Magda Korthals

© Magda Korthals

Jaap Peeman has 40+ years of experience in photography. He is a people photographer with a focus on long-running series in the socialdocumentary genre. Most of his work is taken on the island of Goeree-Overflakkee. This proves once more that you can travel to far away places for your photography but you do not need to. We saw series of people living on the island, series that had a strong emotion of nostalgia; series about disappearing people, places and customs. Jaap grabs those with his camera before they are completely gone.

© Jaap Peeman - Dieppe

© Jaap Peeman | above - Jannie, Greenhouse Peach | below -Ellen, Glass and Stone

Anne-Marie Vermaat describes herself as an intuitive and not a very patient photographer. She has a preference to photograph people and animals and for some obscure unexplained reason, she loves to photograph hairdressers at work! We saw series of police horses trained to be riot resistant, tattooed hairdressers at work, pictures taken in the subway in North-Korea and boxers in the ring. She does not shy away from bluffing herself into situations to take images and in the next life she wants to be a photo journalist. I do not think she has to wait that long because she already is.

© Anne-Marie Vermaat

© Anne-Marie Vermaat

Theo Mastenbroek has a long history in the analogue world. Even after moving into digital photography, he continued to make some use of analogue methods when he felt that it gave a better technical result. His way of working is mostly in-camera and relatively little in postprocessing. He works on single images in the abstract and landscape genre. Theo underpinned his knowledge and skills with printing and exhibiting his work. Large format prints on various qualities of paper and silk made on a large format printer were shown in various exhibition settings. Some work in mixed media was shown like cyanotypes on precoloured paper. Theo’s roots in the fine art, gallery world, could not be clearer demonstrated.

We are what we photograph

If there is one thing this evening clearly showed is that there are as many styles and genres as there are photographers. We are what we photograph and we photograph what we are. Like the Dutch photographer Robin de Puy once said: ‘Ik ben het allemaal zelf’ (It’s all about me).

© Theo Mastenbroek - Freedom