I don’t experience a fundamental difference between creative processes. Whether I am painting, cooking, or writing, creativity moves through every layer of my existence. To me, art and creativity are universal languages, accessible to anyone, at any moment, in countless forms.

Armando, one of the most influential Dutch artists since the Second World War and a profound source of inspiration, embodied this idea fully. He was a journalist, poet, sculptor, painter, actor, boxer, and violinist. He regarded both his life and his oeuvre as a Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art,” a synthesis in which multiple disciplines merge into a single, coherent whole.

Seen from this perspective, my work as a cameraman has been inseparable from my artistic development. It allowed me to encounter people from all walks of life, from presidents to beggars, and to witness events up close that many know only through the media: the war in Afghanistan, the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East, and many more.

These are intellectual riches I could never have accumulated had I remained confined to my studio.

Today, I translate what I have witnessed into writing and painting. These lived experiences form the essence from which my work emerges. My practice as a cameraman is not separate from my art; it is essential to it. It grants me access to realities in their raw state, before they are reshaped by interpretation, distortion, or ideological framing.

In their purest form, these experiences become the raw material for my artistic investigations.