For Whom I Love

Call me, confirm my existence, let my name be like a chain

Call me, call me, speak to me, call me by my deepest name

For whom I love, I want to be called.

Neeltje Maria Min (1966)

For whom I love is a personal document and an investigation into change and letting go.

I grew up in a village in the North of The Netherlands. The family I grew up in is warm and loving. In the summer we learned how to fish and sail behind the house, in the winter we competed who could ice skate the fastest. A safe home was guaranteed.

As I got older and left home, I got homesick. My urge was to keep everything and everyone from my old world as close as possible.

There are rites and customs to formalize and simplify the transition from one stage of life to the next. In most of these rites, family plays a major role and this is the tradition of my photo series: the photos depict a more or less universal experience of farewell, change and loss.

This series is not only an investigation into change but also a farewell. A farewell to the safety and a goodbye to my childhood and youth. Letting go goes hand-in-hand with complex emotional memories that translate into images.

The presentation of the work is in a way a mirror of the memories in my head, unstructured and yet connected in all sorts of subtle ways, such as the trees in the forest, without order, each one in its own right, and yet belonging together.