I started photographing from a young age and that is because my dad encouraged me and my brother to do so. He gifted us his old cameras to shoot with while being on holiday breaks. My dad shot military aircraft worldwide and had his images published in various magazines.

The first half-serious attempt at photography was when I was 15 years old, early 1982, and became involved with a Heavy Metal fanzine called Headbanger. I shot my first metal show in May 1st 1982 (Scorpions, Iron Maiden & Blackfoot in case you were curious) and shortly before that I also made repros of the vinyl album covers which were used for the reviews inside issue #2. From the next issue I became fully involved, besides photography wrote some concert reviews or interviewed some of the bands. Then 18 months after starting, from issue #6 I managed all of it up to the middle of 1987.

Corresponding through snail mail is what you did in those days, penpals we called eachother. We were trading copies of demos, photos and live tapes of the bands and additionally kept each other up to date on other fanzines. My interviews and photographs were published in magazines in the UK, US, Japan, Chile, Italy, Germany, Norway and so forth. A book about this metal period is in the making and should be released soon.

Shooting rock and metal all ended in the summer of 1987 as military service beckoned and there was no time nor energy to be that involved anymore.

Instead I sat in a hole somewhere in the Dutch ground looking at the stars. This military service lasted 14 months and I took a lot of photographs during that period which then resulted in a book that I published back in 2013.

After leaving the army I decided to become more active in photography, I wanted to learn everything that could be learned and for that I ended up in Den-Bosch at Studio Im’agine. This studio was run by Harry van der Brugghen, an excellent advertising photographer. Harry taught me all I needed to know and then some. Not one day was the same, every job was an andventure using lighting. The main thing I took home was that I preferred to photograph people and not dead objects. I developed an interest in shooting fashion. A plan to re-locate to Amsterdam to pursue this did not come to fruition. I moved to Milan instead. What was supposed to be a three month period to gain some experience became a 2.5 years stint.

In 1993 I came back to Harry’s studio as he had had a huge fire in it while shooting a big advertising campaign for a bathroom supplier. He needed a hand so I resettled in NL for the year, but later on in  December I had made up my mind and decided to move to London where I arrived mid-January 1994. That I was going to reside here ever since is as much of a surprise to me than to anyone else.

In 2013 I decided to leave commercial photography.

In 2017 I had an accident which immobilised me for years to come and it is only since late 2022 that I manage to move more freely again.

Now I have decided to shoot on film again.