“I discovered the portrait because I had this one lens.”
Micky Hoogendijk
Many years working in front of the camera has given Dutch/American
photographer Micky Hoogendijk the
empathy necessary to get the emotional content from her models that her
portraits demand. As she told The Austin American Statesman’s Michael Barnes “I
coax trust, contact and vulnerability from my subjects in order to produce an
image from which the viewer can then create his own world.”
Growing up in an artistic environment, her father was photographer/painter
and her mother was an interior designer, Hoogendijk married the Dutch artist Rob Scholte in her 20’s and
ran the business side of his practice. After they separated she took up
modeling and acting. A role in the prime time Dutch soap opera Good times,
bad times brought
her local fame. About which she has said “I played a bitchy character, five
days a week for two years.”
After moving to Hollywood she played a make-up trailer model in Garry
Marshall’s 2004 romantic comedy Raising Helen. In 2008 the New
York International Independent Film & Video Festival gave Hoogendijk the Best Actress award for her
role in the independent drama Blindspot.
Hoogendijk’s switch to the other
side of the camera happened the following year. Her mother gave her a
professional quality camera and Hoogendijk took to the streets of Austin,
Texas. As she has said “I took pictures out on the street. Took pictures of
architecture, lines, homeless people. I was able to walk around and be the
voyeur. I had been so famous in Holland. This changed my life. Made me a better
person.”
After initial encouragement from a local collector which combined
with the limitation of only one lens for her camera, Hoogendijk began to
utilize her knowledge from in front of the camera to take studio based
portraits. “I allow my model’s instinct and personality to melt together with
my camera and drive my creative inspiration,” she says. Working with actors “interesting
people who don’t mind getting naked,” she elaborates, Hoogendijk explores
themes based upon religion, society and mythology.
And as Designer-Vintage.com’s
Karin Barnhoorn wrote
in 2013, “(it’s) A dynamic and inspiring
realm where visual arts, technology and theater melt together into photography.
We’re talking Dutch artistic roots here.”
Hoogendijk’s exhibition The Other Side of
Fear is Freedom is
currently on show at Amsterdam’s Eduard
Planting Gallery until the 7th of March.
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