What.

Five years ago Patricia van de Camp and Marc Heesterbeek started their Art journey with the search for the borders of portrait photography. They started approaching portraits in a conceptual manner. Playing with the universal rules of esthetics that have always been dominant in portrait art, they stretched the meaning of identity and self. In these experiment beauty was always the leading factor. By moving from surreal to more abstract the focus shifted to finding balanced compositions using the portrait as rough material. Identity made place for existence. After deconstructing the photographs the identity of the person portrayed is no longer relevant, there is only the image; the composition of light and dark grays. The original portrayed persons are still recognizable but are now part of a larger whole; albeit stripped to the existential minimum in a balanced composition. The balanced composition brings a silence which according to vandecamp & Heesterbeek is much needed in a world where everything has become fluid and war and chaos have become the everyday reality. This silence, brittle as it may be, is all we have.

How.

A work always starts with Patricia van de Camp taking a photograph. A work ends with Marc Heesterbeek coordinating the printing, framing and hanging the work in a context appropriate to that work. In between this start and end there’s no real distinction in their contribution to the work. Both are free to change whatever they want and undo the changes the other made until the moment that both agree that nothing more can be added or taken out of the work. Because Patricia van de Camp and Marc Heesterbeek always work separate, their studios are in different parts of the Netherlands, and they send the photographs back and forth via a web link, they often misinterpret each other’s intentions. In this way the images start to have a life of their own. A work is only then considered finished when it has been printed.

Patricia van de Camp (1969) studied graphic Art and photography at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and the Design School SDU Kolding in Denmark.

Marc Heesterbeek (1965) studied architecture and urban planning at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven and space architecture at the  SICSA in Houston.

In 2018 they decided to publish their work as an Art duo and combine their skills to make unique photographic works.