Throughout history people can be divided in roughly two groups; those who try to show the truth as they perceive it and those who show to the world the truth how they want it to be. Strangely the resulting images of these intentions are often the same. Both camps are at risk to fall in the ‘fake it until you make it’ pit where good intentions almost always turn bad. Some people say this is the result of social media platforms like Instagram and Tiktok but if you take a good look in museums you can see that the use of filters to beautify or ridicule are omnipresent in the last 60.000 years. Almost every work of art (or ‘objective’ journalistic endeavour) is an interpretation of reality. The one thing that has changed in the last 200 years is that almost everyone has access to an easy way to (mis)represent themselves (or others) by means of photography and as of now by means of artificial intelligence.

In my work as a creator of portraits commissioned by others I see the result of a skewed perception towards what ‘professional’  portraits should look like in the form of criticism that for example because someone is looking with a neutral expression into the camera, it looks like a ‘mugshot’. Rightly so because people on ‘good’ photographs are smiling! Everybody knows that! Or the angle you should photograph people is slightly at an angle above the face… etcetera. Lips should be fat and eyes should be like those of a baby. Asses should be big and feet tiny. No, this is my bad side!

I refuse to live in a world where people have to shout the name of fermented milk to produce a fake smile. Let alone parents who do this to their children behind my back. “SMILE!” (often in anger). How often do you think does a comedian shouts “laugh!” to his audience expecting them to have an actual good time?