Goodbye 2022...

08:00

… is the moment in time where I look outside the window, and ask the sun: Is it time for you to wake up as well?

Only sporadically he answers…

It is strange though. I sometimes feel like the sun, but the more I think about it. 2022 made me feel more and more like that big fuzzy ball in the sky. But only the sun in winter times. Just like now… Not knowing clearly if I am ready to show my face yet.

My balcony window is steamed up… A beam of light was coming through. The light deflects a bit and scatters all over my living room because of that…

It is beautiful.

There is a saying that the sun loves the moon so much, that he dies every night to let her breathe. It makes me think... Is the moon sometimes sad about that? Does she miss him? And does the sun sometimes get cold at night?

After breakfast and morning coffee I pack my gear and prepare to go out and shoot.

I felt lonely and depressed that day… Yet I go out. Back to work, back to the grind… The places I go, the people I meet. All seems connected, it makes me happy. At least outside of the city… Each moment I am done and I finish up my day and go back to the areas where normal life happens the loneliness returns… I see a lot of people. Afraid, and always in a rush… That what strikes me always more when I come back to the Netherlands from a trip sometimes close by… And sometimes far away…

It makes me think of “The Crunch“ by Bukowski…

“there is a loneliness in this world so great

that you can see it in the slow movement of

the hands of a clock

people so tired

mutilated

either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other

one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich

the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.”

I may be thinking about Bukowski but it is conflicted by my own longing. I am more of a Johnny Cash person anyway, and his description of paradise.

Something was gnawing on me though… If you read about the photography masters, they sometimes mention that photography is a mirror. What is really inside is what comes out. And they way you view the world is a part of who you are.

I explicitly say part and not just who. Since so many things in life are so more nuanced then meets the eye. And a lot of humans are just not really one thing.

Maybe they were right. Maybe that is the reason why my photographs are always filled with melancholia. Maybe it comes from scars in my heart from they pain I carried inside for a long time... Or that I never had a “Merry“ Christmas. And the times they were Merry they were based on a lie. Maybe it is because of a society that wants me to be normal “because being normal is crazy enough” and I just want to be full of emotion and not being afraid to express myself. Or when I was a little boy my piggy bank was suddenly empty and a month later it was full again. Only to discover on a later age that was because otherwise we wouldn’t have anything to eat.

Maybe it is just me…

My day continues…

I have a coffee. I make my food…

My phone buzzes…

I could have swore it was from someone I deeply care about since everyone I regularly speak to have their own sound.

Nothing… No message at all…

I must have gone crazy…

The news is real and I read it… I scroll through social media… I see stories passing by about Iran and Yemen. An energy crisis. A kitty was also saved from a tree.

It makes me think that despite I travelled so much and learned so much. I actually know nothing. I will never know how it is to flee from your home country or how it makes you feel when there is a revolution is going on. But know that every time you tell me about it I will have a tear in my eye.

Out for groceries… Next to the super market Christmas trees are being sold. Yet it reminds me of a story of someone told me that she couldn’t take a bath because with current energy prices the costs are just too high. Do I get a tree for myself this year? My decision ends up in a “no“ and get a big ball of dough we eat at the end of the year, baked in oil, named a “oliebol”, instead.

I punish myself by working out a little bit longer…

I cycle home…

Go to bed, and when and I wake up the next morning all the autumn leaves in my head are making way for blankets of snow that cover my ever lasting thoughts and turn into a beautiful winter landscape…

Frozen… For now… Until the sun shines bright again and it is time to show what is underneath. My head could have been a snow globe.

It makes me think about love. What is love, actually? And why are we so afraid of it? I know what it is for me. Love is freedom. Love is support and letting each other grow. Love is not possessive. Whatever kind of love you are seeking for in life, love is about being whole again. I know that, and believe in that with my heart and soul. Maybe that is why it is so scary? To get what we really want in life…?

My breakfast consists of my favourite coffee and my favourite crackers. I take a bite, my phone buzzes. This time it was real…

The text made me smile.

Time to go… Time to head out… Time for the grind… To work on that photographic dream. To express myself.

It was a beautiful foggy day in the Netherlands and the fog fell over the landscape like a magical cloud with treasure hidden inside it.

It was a good day. Cold, but good.

When I got home I started writing as well… This piece…

It makes me think about that I want to write a poem… I grabbed my typewriter and set it up on my living room table… A paper is inserted in the machine… I love this paper… Grain and structure are present all over. It is perfectly imperfect… Just like me. Just like you…

I write down the words…

“i am the story of a human being
I am the wound of time
I am falling rain…”

I pause… Is it done…?

Yes…

It is done…

Happy new year and a amazing 2023…

And isn’t art beautiful?

~ Cristian

P.S. Thank you every one that made my year amazing again. You are always in my thoughts and in my heart. You know who you are. You are the ones I feel safe with. My friends and my dearest. <3

Thank you Anna-Patricia for finding me. It is beautiful to have an amazing and super sweet gallery director in your life.

Thank you Fotovakhuis for supporting me and being my second home.

And thank you everyone that always follows my adventures. 2022 was amazing. But I promise you… There are plenty of more adventures to come. And I will hopefully will finish the project I am working on soon. Good things just take time… Just keep checking in on me… And I will do the same with you.

With all my love…

Thank you…

Me working snapped by other Chris.

Signing session at the ºCLAIRbyKahn booth at Paris Photo 2022.

Expired Agfa Record Rapid paper from somewhere late 80’s begin 90’s. I started with a proof of concept a month a go and wanted to make everything perfect before I started printing for real. It is the only box I had and this paper is not being made anymore. Expired paper is not only difficult to work with both also there are tonal shifts that can be aesthetically pleasing. I wanted to finish this idea this year. It may not be a conventional way of silver gelatin printing, but projects like this help make me become a better printer in general and it also helps me thing outside of the box.

Size 72cm x 53,4 cm. Edition of 1.

Happy New Year from my little place of magic…

A colour blinds man attempt to colour photography...

A colour blinds man attempt to colour photography...

Last weekend we had beautiful winter landscapes in the Netherlands. And for me, as a colour blind dude, it even looked gorgeous.

I met up with other Chris and he had the idea to rise extra early and go deep into one of our nature reserves close by where we live.

Before I left I noticed a 120 roll of colour film lying around and decided to take it. The roll I bought actually for a totally different purpose. But more on that later…

My eyes can’t see colour. Well at least not properly. It is not that I see black and white, but I have no idea what I am looking at when I go out in the world. It is one big enigma to me… Every test that I do says that I have a different kind of colour blindness. So let’s just say it is just weird. Despite that, my favourite colour is red. I think…

So this is the result of my playing with colour on a early morning.

See it as a Christmas present for people who are curious what happens.

P.S. Before you comment on this post with remarks like: “You should shoot colour more often“, or anything similar… I appreciate it if you don’t. Those kind of remarks make me highly uncomfortable. Photography for me is about expressing myself, and how harsh it sounds I don’t press the shutter button and print for someone else. I do it because I love it and for me. That I have an audience is a wonderful bonus. :)

Even if I could see colour I believe that colour is highly overrated if you don’t know what you are doing and achieving with certain palettes.

From a functional standpoint. Colour correcting or matching socks is not something that I will ever achieve in life. :)

Colour has a very limited place in my life, and I just look at the world differently than most people. And yes, sometimes a tear is shed that I never ever will be able to do certain things in life or see certain things.

Back from Paris Photo 2022...

Paris Photo is over and I had the best best best time. :) Anna-Patricia thank youuuuu you are the best! You have no idea how happy I was. And even better, being there with my handmade silver gelatin prints and leporello booklets. I just had the best of times. :)

Also of cours thank you Robert and Philipp. You all made feel at home. :)

Now back to the darkroom. :)

Paris Photo 2022

I’ve been making this magical box and prints by hand for a special occasion that will be happening in Paris from the 10th of November until the 13th. Paris Photo 2022.

I will be there with the Clairbykahn gallery and you can find us at boot E15 together with (and the work of) Chien Chi Chang, Pascal Bastien, Philippe Halsman, Sigalit Landau and of course David “Chim” Seymour. Including the famous “Jump” photograph by Philipe Halsman.

Come say hi if you are around. I will be at the booth on the 12th from 16:00 to 18:00.

I always feel you there in my dreams...

I always feel you there
in my dreams

when I take a shower
or talk to you in my thoughts about my day

when I look outside
you are there

like a ghost
or a phantom

I’ve kissed the lips
of an angel

but that was just
in my dreams as well

Still Melancholy

Not mine, but written by George Eliot. I thought it was tot beautiful not to share.

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonize. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. “

- George Eliot

Experiment in oak toning

Experiment in oak toning.

I was looking to see if I could find a way to make prints more personal. So what I did was I collected oak bark and made a toner out of that.

I added the toner to my regular process which I do with selenium and it actually came out pretty well.

The goal was to make prints of photographs that you can easily put in a book or a journal or a book, and you discover as little treasures when you open it. The feeling it should give you when you discover them is nostalgia and give you a little smirk on your face. Similar to the smirk you get if you receive a hand written note of a loved one.

I wanted it to be with done with materials you can find around the area here in Haarlem and where certain photographs are taken to tie things in the concept together.

This does not mean all photographs will be done like this. Only when it is called for. But if you see the print for real it really does look pretty. :)

I like broken things...


I like broken things... That goes for my new old typewriter as well... I ordered a new ribbon. It's okay though. The old not so functional one is perfectly fine. It's reminds me of life... And make me reflect that despite some of us are made up of broken pieces, we are perfectly fine as well. :)

Love you all...

~ Cristian

In a parallel universe... - A mini photo essay of a journey in Morocco while I should have been in Iraq.

In a parallel universe…

I wouldn’t be talking to the sea in Casablanca

I love talking to the sea

Maybe it is because the sea is connected to the heart of the moon

And everytime we speak

she lets me hear her thunder and her storms

the embrace of her waves

sometimes with delicacy

and sometimes with all her passion

and all of her rumbles

But when she is sad

I always tell her

That someone gifted me once a box full of darkness

but in the end that darkness will make you shine bright

brighter than a dance

under a thousand stars

I love talking to the sea so much…

And I would trade every

single

day

to say to her…

that my favourite season is autumn as well

despite

I sometimes

feel like a fading burning sun

In a parallel universe…

I wouldn’t be walking in tiny streets

With walls that stretch far into the sky

like concrete trees

and magic doors

Magic doors

so special

that if you walk through them

you will end up

End up in a place

Where your heart gets hugged

and where a song starts playing

for only those who listen with their soul

can hear

In a parallel universe…

You would not have set me down on that stool…

asking me to tell me about my day

and just to make sure

I was perfectly fine

I would have left if it wasn't for you

you know…

one of your poems was about rain

Maybe that's why I stayed

I would have left if it wasn't for you

you know…

I am sure

it was because

I recognized your rain as well…

because it looked so much like my own

And told you

self-love should be the very first romance…

In a parallel universe…

I wouldn’t have had a dream about a proud old man and a horse

Out of nothing

I heard a voice which sounded like thunder

it was a dark horse

and his name that sat on him

was life

I rode with him

until his legs were tired

but was ready to rest with a giant smile

you will be fine, my friend

he said

despite sometimes

it just takes a while…

Story behind the mini photo essay…

The initial plan for end of spring was to visit my friend in Iran. But because they had their own plans to travel, I opted to go and visit my friends in Iraq. And while I was there also create a photo essay as well. Specifically the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

When I was ready to board the plane and waiting in front of the gate with a bag full of film, and presents. There was just simply no airplane to take me to Iraq.

The solution of the airline was to stuff me into a hotel in Istanbul to wait for the next available flight. But the airport personnel here figured out that all of the upcoming flights where grossly overbooked as well, so that would be being stuck in Istanbul for way too long. And while Istanbul is an amazing city, it still would have meant I would lose valuable time in Iraq itself. And you don’t go to Iraq for a lightning quick visit if you have the chance. You want to enjoy the country to it’s fullest.

So I opted to get my money back. And as soon as I got my money back I checked for the other airline that would fly to Erbil. But that website was down…

Eventually I picked Morocco instead and gave myself a a forced holiday which I haven’t had in years! I mean I travel regularly and it is always fun. But it is always with a purpose. I am just very bad at sitting on my ass…

People who know me personally can vouch for that.

The only flight that was available which fitted in my schedule was one to Casablanca. The idea was when I got to Casablanca to take a bus to Essaouira and just chill…

But fate decided to rock my world again and gave me food poisoning right before a six hour bus ride… And if you have ever had food poisoning in your life, you would know that the only place where you feel safe is the shower… A bus is the last place where you want to be… Especially for six hours…

Of all the chances a nurse came sitting next to me, and the wonderful conversations I had with her made me feel good enough to arrive in a proper manner. Thank you Imane. :)

Eventually…

Eventually in Essaouira I couldn’t resist to do nothing at all despite I needed more than a couple of days to recover fully. But in the end I just love photography so much… It is my way to make sense of things… So I did what I could with the severe limited amount of time I had.

The other bonus was that I met some amazing people over there. People that really touched my heart in ways that I couldn’t imagine.

But that is the downside of travel…

The biggest upside of traveling is like reading a thousand books… But saying goodbye always feels like breaking your heart.

For the tech geeks…

I shot a combination of film and digital. I just grabbed the camera I was in the mood for and didn’t want to think about things too much. Also it is no secret that I use everything that a Carl Zeiss can be attached to. In the end it doesn’t matter though. A good photo is a good photo… And they still need to be printed. So from some I will create negatives and create silver gelatin prints anyway.

Photography is all about the printing…

There were of course more images taken. But those will be shared on a later moment.

Ending words…

In the future I will go back to Morocco again. And when fate allows me I will still have to plan to go to Iraq. Can’t wait to see my friends.

All will be fine in the end… And if it isn’t fine… It isn’t the end…

Thank you Halima Haloumi Goldfish, Marcus, Imane, Jakob, Marwane, Pierre, David. And all the others amazing human beings I ran into in that short of a time. Without all of you beautiful souls I definitely wouldn’t have had such a wonderful time.. You will forever be in my heart.

That is a promise…

~ Cristian

Hi my name is Cristian

Hi my name is Cristian

I like waking up early
But when I open up my eyes it takes me way too long to get out bed

I am literally color blind
Yet my favorite color is red
I think...

Sometimes I struggle with depression
But luckily I am really really strong
Oh and I also lift weights

Whenever I have seen a scary movie
I still check for monsters under my bed

But I always forget they are mainly in my closet
And in my head
Together with my demons
Who sometimes find their way to my heart

But I lock them into towers until they turn into birds
and learn to build bridges between them

I am a photographer and a hopeless romantic
And there are days that I struggle how society looks at me
Because it doesn't see me that way

I overthink everything I do
Even overthinking...
Or why I put my socks in the fridge
and if I can achieve everything I want in life before I die

Or that birds don't need bridges
Because they can fly wherever the hell they want

Yes I am flawed
Yes I am flawed
Yes I am flawed

I've made some incredible mistakes
And repeat them at least three times
But I have forgiven myself for that

And at 39 years of age
I have finally learned to love myself

Hi my name is Cristian
And as you can see I am a work in progress...

There are days that I talk to god

And I say to him
Life doesn't come with an instruction manual
But I am doing the best I can

And when he replies
He tells me that heaven is not only a place you go when you die
but also every day on earth and right now

I just need to believe and follow my heart
And when I do
He leaves feathers of angels in my footsteps

There was a gust of wind...

When we hugged to say goodbye
You wrapped your arms around me
Afraid I might blow away

My face was covered by your hair
It reminded me of beautiful spring blossoms
I could kiss them all

There was a gust of wind
That blew away every bit of me
Except for my love

Because that is eternal...

Silver Gelatin print on Ilford Warmtone fiber. Selenium toned.

Seen by CLAIRbyKahn

Hey everyone,

Sometimes in your life something amazing happens. And let this be one of those amazing things...

I can happily announce that I have become part of Seen by Kahn by CLAIRbyKahn.

If you know the CLAIRbyKahn gallery you know how excited I got when I received an e-mail one morning from the director while I was just finishing up one of my morning workouts. I just had to do a little dance in the living room and texted my closest friends immediately.

When I first started out with photography I was daydreaming about the photographs of Eikoh Hosoe, Lartigue, and Klavdij Sluban. And all of a sudden someone who actually works with them contacts you. Not only that: That also understands the magic of printing!

Thank you so much for finding me Anna-Patricia, and wanting to guide and coach me. You have no idea how happy I am about this. :)

And thank you Eelco en Thana and Chris for always being there for me and putting up with me when I am bitching and moaning that feel nothing is working out at all. You the best. Dennis as well of course.

People who give you a chance or are just there for you are a gem and they should be cherished.

I will have a celebration beer this weekend. :)

Lith printing.

If you have been following my stories a bit you've seen that I've been experimenting with alternative processes instead of my regular process. The reason is just to have a bigger pallet of skills in my regular practice. It's something I've learned from being an athlete. Broaden hour horizon, and you will have more insights in your main thing. :)

So in this case I've been figuring out the process called Lith printing. If you are a fan of i.e. Anton Corbijn there was a phase that his printer used the lith technique as well.

As you can see there is a heavy color to mine and to his are none. But that depends on so many variables as well as paper used. And the paper I used here was fomatone since it is easily available and liths very well. There are not many papers available nowadays that lith very well, so it seemed like a logical choice.

Anyways to make a long story short. Printing is amazing and I just wanted to share an experiment. :)

Thanks @hetfotovakhuishaarlem for the scan and @contrastique for helping out with the negative. And @captain.forkbeerd for being a the bearded day dreamer.

I swallowed the sun...

Stay... Remember me...

You are like that song that I
cannot understand the words of
But I feel it is about the daughter of the moon

Every day I am afraid the earth will swallow me
But sometimes I want to swallow the sun
So it will stop shining
It is either that or extinguishing it's flames with tears that flow like rivers

Stay... Remember me...

The desert called your name
It once called mine as well
I couldn't hear the words to clearly
So my soul left way too many years ago

It dug a hole deep into the ground
And ended up in the land of water and wind
Only to roam the landscape for ages
Nothing but deer to guide me
So it didn't go astray

I woke up at dawn
Stumbled over a rock and found my heart
It had burn marks
of being afraid
And swallowing the sun

My roots felt like an endless summer
And my autumn turned my leaves in grey

Stay... Remember me...

I put my heart back in my body
And promised myself...
Next time
Instead of burn
It will melt...
And turn into notes of songs
That will sing a serenade to the night

Stay... Remember me...

So that stars can guide me once again to that desert
Where I first found you
Guide me
with your light

Negative made on coated handcrafted Tosa Washi paper.

Test printed on Foma fiber.

The negative is logically a bit brittle so hopefully it will remain intact for a proper print on my favorite Bergger fiber paper. Otherwise it will be the only few prints ever made.

Me at work (short)


Last summer when I decided to cut my hair short and lug a 4x5 around because I like to punish myself always a little bit extra. Chris van Keulen followed me around and created a video of me working. Thanks a bunch dude.