Visual Art and Videojournalism
An eclectic symbiosis
The symbiosis I seek to forge between my work as a cameraman, filmmaker, photographer, painter and writer, is essential to creating meaningful art.
ARS LONGAS, VITA BREVIS
Mastering a craft takes time, and life is short.
Over the past twenty years, my work as a cameraman allowed me to meet any person from president to beggar. I was present during events that make up the news when they were still raw and unfiltered, before stereotypes and (mis)interpretations could mangle their contexts. I witnessed the ongoing refugee crisis up close. I have seen earthquakes, warzones as well as multimillion-dollar properties. I have had the chance to show audiences what was happening in different parts of the world and make up my mind about what I had seen first-hand.
Later translated into writing and painting, these experiences form the essence from which I conceive my art. Because the news is unpredictable, having little control over where I will end up makes the process even more interesting and less biased by my (artistic) prejudices.
I, therefore, consider this fieldwork outside the studio indispensable.
Art, to me, is a quest, an endless arena with no rules other than to keep examining, investigating, and experimenting. My philosophy is to wander any creative path. To search without ever finding.
ARTISTIC PEDIGREE
I never planned to become a videojournalist, it just happened as it happened to my uncle Daniel Koning, who worked as a photojournalist for the Dutch newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’ for most of his life.
The aesthetics of his photographs became an inspiration for a generation of photographers.
I consider my uncle Daniel to be an artist. An artist who gave profound personal interpretations to the worldly events that made up his career as a journalist.
He challenged himself to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. To discover a visual storyline in every situation he was asked to photograph. It seemed to be a kind of ‘creative improvisation’: no endless overthinking, no re-arranging lights, models and sets. Instead, an observer who was catching moments in life as they happened.
I spent substantial parts of my childhood looking through the photobooks my uncle published. The famous people like Nelson Mandela he portrayed and the countries he visited.
He was an inspiration.
Just like my grandmother Paula Boeke, was an inspiration. She was a piano and violin teacher educated in London, an heiress to the influential British Cadbury family known for their chocolate empire and their prominent role in the Quaker ideology. Her father, my great-grandfather, Kees Boeke was a Dutch reformist educator, Quaker missionary and pacifist. He is best known for his popular essay Cosmic View (1957), which presents a seminal view of the universe from the galactic to the microscopic scale. My grandfather Paul Koning, was a painter and a sculptor. My father, Jeroen Koning, was a photographer and videographer and still is a writer.
At our family dinners, journalism, cinematography, philosophy, social engagement, literature, arts and music always blended seamlessly.
