I have started this project when I started out with photography which was 2016.
I didn’t know what I was doing and the more time is progressing it is evolving. And so am I as human being and a man.
Glad that I am because I am firm believer in that if I would be the same man as yesterday, I would not be much of a man…
Ever evolving… Ever changing… Learning…
Since recent developments I have started to think about the future of this project. And if it still makes sense. The thoughts were marinated and marinated… And the end conclusion was: Yes, it still makes sense.
But it is going to change.
My intention of my international photography normally is to focus on what brings us together. Not on the suffering of humanity. Which unfortunately is also a story that needs to be told. But for a long time it felt that is was not my what the heart wanted or needed. Or even more important, if I would add anything useful to the conversation.
After making many many friends in this area of the world recent events have made me cry and cry and cry… No tears from ego but tears that I was not sure that some people I have met I would ever see again. All my thoughts have marinated enough…
So in what way is my project going to change?
In my own personal way I am going to talk more about Palestine.
There is a lot what the world needs to know. About the apartheid, open air prison, nightly raids, daily raids, checkpoints, stealing of water, and the list goes on and on…
From a Dutch perspective I was always learned to think a certain way because of the second world war. Which is without a doubt is the most horrible time humanity has gone through, and the holocaust the most cruelest act humanity has ever done.
Never again…
And indeed Never again… But one of the questions one can ask ourselves is that how did we end up here if we said never again?
If you don’t what what I mean with “End up here…“ this is maybe another question I am trying to answer. But as reader there also lies a duty with oneself to educate and read as much as possible about what is going. That count’s for everything not only Palestine.
It doesn’t make me an anti-Semite. You can fight anti-Semitism as well as standing and fighting for human rights. In this case fighting for the human rights of the Palestinian people.
And who am I to tell and photograph all of this?
In the end I am just nothing more than a man that can’t stand the suffering of humanity.