Marco van Duyvendijk
Photography & text: Marco van Duyvendijk; Graphic design: Nevel Karaali; ISBN: 978-90-812675-1-9; Language: Dutch; copyright 2007
Rabobank Utrecht en Omstreken (Greater Utrecht) saw Van Duyvendijk’s work more than a year ago and was immediately impressed by his personal involvement and his distinctive ‘signature’. The bank decided to give him a special commission to create a series of photographs. They didn’t send him to Mongolia or the former Eastern Bloc, but instead asked him to find inspiration close to home. They commissioned him to ‘capture the diversity of the residents of the City of Utrecht’.
In order to create a quality portrait photograph, it is essential that ‘something’ happens between the photographer and the model. This clearly applies to Marco van Duyvendijk who frequently becomes friends with the people he photographs. He has, for example, been following the lives of several street children in Romania for years and has repeatedly succeeded in capturing their images on film in a strikingly disarming manner.
The series of photographs that Van Duyvendijk created proves that inspiration is always close at hand. He visited FC Utrecht football matches, rehearsals and performances of Turkish dance groups, photographed the colourful visitors at an outdoor swimming pool, went along with a hairdresser who faithfully visits his ageing clientele and also asked random passers-by who he found intriguing to pose for him. It turned out to be a unique chronicle of an era that portrays the various cultures and subcultures of a city such as Utrecht in a remarkably penetrating fashion.
