A search for my son’s roots and the bond between us.

Since my son left our house at the age of 21 to live in an assisted home, the distance between us has increased. Literally and figuratively. That's why I wanted to take my son back to the country where he was born. A search ~ búsqueda ~ for his roots, with a little hope that it would awaken something in him.

But the chance that you build a bond with a place that you have left around your first birthday is small. And it doesn't get bigger if your body and mind have suffered considerable scars because you were born 14 weeks early.

It wasn’t an easy trip. Often my son was very quiet and introverted. I couldn’t figure out wat he was feeling or thinking. It made me sad to see him like this. Later he would say to me : ” Mom, I was a little overwhelmed”

 I will let you travel. You will see the love that I cherish for my son. It is a journey through Colombia, it is a journey through the emotional world of a complicated, but loving mother-son relationship. Life as it is. A continuous search.

A few months after our trip, my son started to open up and couldn’t stop talking about our trip together. Although he doesn’t want to go back (for now), he told me that he was proud to have Colombian roots.

*As a collaborative project, my son, also a rapper who writes his own lyrics, and I decided to create a video together. In this project, I used my son's raps, which he both wrote and performed. You can find it on this website.

In this story, I reflect on my friendship with a remarkable man named Steen, who sadly passed away last year. Steen was a nomad by choice, a man of wind and water devoted to a life without chains until fate clipped his wings.

I portray him in his final bloom.

Steen lived unbound, driven by the roads and rivers that called to him. He was not only a wanderer in his travels but also in his work. In his twenties, he was a photographer in the late sixties and early seventies. Now, decades later, the thousands of negatives he left me awaken his stories once more.

A year after we met, he was forced to leave his ship, the life he had built for over forty years.

A soul yearning for freedom, defying all odds and struggles, only to find itself ultimately confined by the limits of an aging body.

Only now do I realize how often Steen spoke of freedom in the past tense. I look at pictures of him as a young man in his twenties, full of dreams and possibilities. Then I look at the photos I took of him during the last five years of his life. The same man, but with a different gaze, the fragile core of an independent soul, captured in pure honesty.

When do we stop making plans for the future? When does that imperceptible shift occur?

Do we tell our stories to hold on to who we were, or to understand who we are now?

On January 13, 2024, Steen passed away in his camper, as he wished.

I am currently working on a photo book about Steen’s life, where his images and mine meet across time.

To see more of ‘ Life of Steen’ please watch the short docu, filmed by Trip to the Moon Films

Black transgender women in the United States face disproportionate levels of violence, discrimination, incarceration, and limited access to healthcare and housing.

CC’s story reflects the reality many continue to live today. In recent years, and particularly since the political climate under Trump, conditions have become increasingly hostile, with growing attacks on trans rights and visibility.

Her life speaks to both resilience and vulnerability, and to a world that still struggles to make space for those who do not fit within its norms.

In 2017, in the shabby streets of Sweet Auburn, Atlanta, I met CC. She asked me to photograph her, and I said yes.

Then she disappeared.

Years later, her voice found me again, messages sent from inside a men’s prison: videos, letters, fragments of her days, small proofs of a life continuing out of sight. From a distance, I watched her try to survive a place built to erase her.

When she was released in 2023, I went back to keep my promise and see her again.

She was living on her mother’s couch, trying to rebuild something fragile. We moved through the city together, eating, shopping, laughing, while I photographed her. At times, without warning, something in her would fall quiet.

I didn’t always know how to be there. I only knew I didn’t want to look away.

A week after I left, she relapsed. Two weeks later, she died.

I returned once more for her funeral. She was buried as a man.

I know I will never forget her, and I am grateful, and proud, to have known her.

RIP my dear and brave CC.

During a backstage photoshoot for the Dutch National Opera & Ballet in Amsterdam at the beginning of 2020, I met the Belgian dancer Nina Tonoli. She had recently moved to Amsterdam, leaving behind her boyfriend and the comfort of her life in Vienna to follow her dream of becoming a soloist with the Dutch National Ballet.

After the shoot, Nina asked if we could continue working together. Curious about the woman behind the ballerina, I agreed. I wanted to understand what it means to devote your life entirely to dance, especially for someone who had already spent years moving from country to country, chasing a dream that always seemed to exist somewhere else.

Then the world suddenly came to a standstill.

The rhythm that had shaped her entire life disappeared overnight. Years of training, rehearsing, and performing six days a week were replaced by silence and isolation. In a small apartment in Amsterdam, far away from her boyfriend and unable to perform before an audience, Nina tried to hold on to the only language she had ever truly known: movement.

Dancers trained alone through online classes, repeating exercises in living rooms and narrow hallways, trying not to lose the strength and discipline their bodies had been built upon for years. But what happens to a dancer when there is nowhere left to dance? What happens when the body longs for movement, but the world asks it to stand still?

The stillness of the pandemic gave us something that would otherwise never have existed: time. Time to meet again and again. Time to slowly discover the woman behind the elegance, perfection, and control expected of a ballerina.

Listening to Nina speak about dance was like listening to someone speak about love. Even through physical pain, loneliness, and sacrifice, her devotion never faded. Her personal life always seemed to come second to dance, yet she accepted this with a quiet determination that moved me deeply.

Some people choose dance.

For others, dance is as necessary as breathing.

Because in the end, a dancer needs to dance.

At first glance, Mare is like any other thirteen-year-old girl. But life in her family is different. Her brother has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a progressive muscle disease that slowly takes away his strength and threatens his life. Simple things many families take for granted, going on holiday, eating out, or spending a day at the beach, are often difficult or simply impossible.

Mare helps wherever she can. She loves her brother deeply and sees how much her parents carry every day. Like any girl her age, she wants to spend time with friends and enjoy her teenage years, yet she often feels guilty afterward because her brother cannot share those experiences.

Over time, Mare has learned to live with the reality that her brother will not get better, that life will not become easier, and that even greater challenges lie ahead. Yet within this difficult reality, there is also warmth. The bond between Mare, her brother, and her parents is strong, loving, and deeply connected.

I started this project because Mare reminds me of my own daughter at that age. Although my son does not have a life-threatening illness, he is mentally disabled and also requires a great deal of care and attention. In the Netherlands there is a word for siblings like Mare and my daughter: “Brusjes.” The term combines the Dutch words for little brother (broertje) and little sister (zusje) and refers to siblings of children with disabilities or chronic illnesses.

From an early age, Brusjes understand that their sibling needs more care than they do. No matter how hard parents try to balance this, these children often grow up receiving less attention themselves. Many become especially caring and mature, instinctively helping their parents and supporting their sibling in every way they can.

(Polaroid SX 70 -series)

As a white mother of two adopted children of color, I have experienced prejudice firsthand. Sometimes it appears in subtle remarks or behavior from strangers, sometimes in painfully direct ways. Reactions shaped by ignorance or disapproval toward a family that does not fit what some people consider “normal.” As if love should only exist within what is familiar or socially accepted.

With this project, I want to show that prejudice does not stand in the way of love. People can love one another regardless of color, gender, age, race, or religion. By sharing these images, I hope to encourage people to look beyond their assumptions and become more open and compassionate toward others.

For this series I chose to work with vintage Polaroid SX-70 cameras. These old cameras are unpredictable, you never fully know how an image will turn out, just as you never know how people will respond.

The Polaroids were scanned, but I intentionally left the scratches, marks, and imperfections untouched. They reflect the emotional damage that can be caused by repeated exposure to prejudice, bluntness, and disapproval.

This project is made possible by “Het Steunfonds Freelance Fotografen” (Support Fund for freelance Photographers)

Skerries is a small coastal town north of Dublin, where life seems to move slowly between sea, wind, and long quiet afternoons.

I met Derry there shortly after his first communion. On his first day back at school, he insisted on wearing his older brother’s suit instead of his school uniform. His mother had bought him a new suit of his own, but Derry preferred the one that already carried someone else’s shape.

After school, his mother took him to the beach. Still carefully dressed, Derry wandered along the shoreline with quiet pride and tenderness, seemingly untouched by the cold sea air around him.

This short series is less about childhood itself than about the fragile moment of becoming — when identity begins to take shape in small gestures, quiet desires, and the need to be seen for who we are.

n 1998, I traveled to Medellín, Colombia, to adopt my son. At the time, the city still carried the shadow of the drug war. Although Pablo Escobar had already been dead for several years, fear remained present in daily life. We rarely moved around freely and experienced Medellín as a tense and uncertain place.

When I returned in 2014, I encountered a very different city. Medellín felt more open, more alive, and far safer than I remembered. Yet traces of the past were still visible beneath the surface.

In 2018, on the 25th anniversary of Escobar’s death, I visited Barrio Escobar, a neighborhood where he had built hundreds of houses for poor families. While most Colombians remember Escobar as a symbol of violence and terror, I discovered that in this neighborhood his memory still lived on in a very different way.

Many residents, including young people born long after his death, continue to speak about him with admiration. They call him Pablito — the man who gave their families homes, dignity, and the feeling of being seen.

I found myself wondering how someone responsible for so much violence could still be remembered with tenderness. But memory is rarely simple. In places shaped by poverty and inequality, gratitude and trauma can exist side by side.

These portraits are not about Pablo Escobar himself, but about the lingering presence of his myth and the generations growing up in its shadow.

A few years ago, I met Carlos in the small rural town of Tota in the Colombian highlands. His wife had recently passed away, a profound loss that deeply affected him. Unfortunately, Carlos didn't have the privilege of having children, and his family resides at least a 6-hour bus ride away. Despite having an occasional drinking buddy, Carlos often experiences a sense of loneliness.

Doug’s Place is a small diner in Georgia, United States, where time seems to have stood still. Little has changed over the years, and little probably ever will.

For many of its regular visitors, the diner offers more than breakfast or lunch. It is a familiar ritual, a place of comfort and quiet routine. Most people arrive alone, yet within these walls they seem less solitary. A short conversation with a waitress, a familiar face at the counter, or simply returning to the same seat each day creates a sense of belonging.

In a world that moves increasingly fast, Doug’s Place remains a small and timeless refuge, a place where people come not only to eat, but to feel seen.