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If you happen to like
beautiful photographs,

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you probably won't like
what I am going to say

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therefore, let's start where it all began,

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sometimes it makes it easier
to think along.

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For me, it started with the work
of a photographer;

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Arsath Ro'is,

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he worked for the Amsterdam municipality

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a civil servant,

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and his job was to record
the changing city.

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Every morning he would take his moped

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and drive to the outskirts of Amsterdam -

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where the buildings sites were

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and the tunnels were dug
and the ring road was built -

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There was always
a lot of sand in his pictures

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and that's why the civil servants
he worked with,

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called him the "sand photographer."

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You probably noticed already

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that there is a moped in every image -

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the story goes like this:

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one day Arsath Ro'is was taking a photo
on a building site,

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and he was just focusing
on his camera and the subject,

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and behind his back
somebody was stealing his moped.

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(Laugher)

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And he swore never to leave
his moped out of sight.

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(Laugher)

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So, what have we got here:

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we've got very
straightforward photography,

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there are no artistic ambitions.

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Arsath Ro'is was not interested
in taking interesting photographs,

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he just wanted to do his job

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and he didn't want
his moped to be stolen again.

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And that is what makes him so authentic.

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Now I'll mention a photographer

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with artistic ambitions:

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there was a time that I was
a photographer with artistic ambitions -

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(Laughter)

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You know, I had shows in galleries,
and in museums,

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I made books, there were concepts,

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and projects and themes
and series and subjects -

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I could have bought a moped

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(Laughter)

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and put it in every image that I took

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I could have adopted a surrealistic style,
a straight forward style,

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I even could have had success with it,

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but it would have been
just another concept,

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it would have been fake,

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and would not have been authentic at all.

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Isn't is weird that somebody
working for the municipality

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is more authentic
than an artist may ever be?

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Mind you, a civil servant,
working from 9 to 5.

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There are two things
that you can conclude from this:

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one thing is, it's dangerous
to have artistic ambitions,

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they may prevent you from being authentic;

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second, if you really want
to make interesting pictures,

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you shouldn't want to make them.

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Do you want me to repeat that?

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(Laughter)

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So, after I saw the work of Arsath Ro'is

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and I realised what it meant,

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I dropped the projects and the concepts,

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and the themes and the series
and the subjects -

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I sold my equipment,

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I threw away half of my negatives,

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and the rest I sold
to the Dutch Photo Museum,

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Nederlands Fotomuseum,

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and I persuaded them to put it

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downloadable for free
on their web site, high [resolution]

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so you could make prints like this of it.

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Sometimes people send me a picture

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of what they have done with my picture -

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(Laughter)

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it may look that I'd done this

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all in a whim,

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but in fact it took me years to do it.

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But, man, what a relief.

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Finally I could see what there is to see.

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Most photography is not about
seeing what there is to see,

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most photography is about
presenting the world

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in a well composed way

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and that is not easy to do,
because the world is very chaotic,

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and you have to be very skilled
as a photographer to do it;

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and when you do it
as a photographer, people say:

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"You are a good photographer!
Look at this image,

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what a beautiful image,
it's almost like a painting" -

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(Laughter)

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And it's not a modern painting
it's not Andy Warhol,

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it's old-fashioned, 17th,
18th century, 19th century painting.

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In 1816, a French naval ship
named "The Medusa"

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sank to the bottom of the sea,

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and 147 seamen managed to get on a raft.

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They floated around for two weeks,

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many died, and eventually 15 seamen
were saved.

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Two years later, in 1818,

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the French painter,
Theodore Gericault painted this ordeal.

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And now we go to 2008,

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Georgian army invaded South Ossetia,

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the Russian army expelled them very soon,

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and this is a picture of soldiers

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retreating from South Ossetia --

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You see the connection?

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I can show a lot of pictures like this,

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with all this connection
between painting and photography,

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but I'm not going to do it,
I trust that you think alone.

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I'll only show this one:

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a picture I made myself in 1998,

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it is very popular,
people like it very much,

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it's the most downloaded from the internet

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of the web site
of the Nederlands Fotomuseum.

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Do you know why people like this picture?

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Because it resembles almost every picture

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of Caspar David Friedrich.

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(Laughter)

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And it's not on purpose
that people like it,

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it's not on purpose
that I made it this way,

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it's unaware,

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it's something we carry around with us,

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it's our cultural history.

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And of course in the beginning
I liked it when people said:

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this is a beautiful picture,

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you are a good photographer.

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But there came a moment that I thought,

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I want to see what there is to see

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and not be dictated
by painting all the time,

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old fashioned painting all the time.

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Can photography have a beauty of its own?

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And if beauty is too much to ask,

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can it be interesting on its own?

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Interesting - if you really want
to make interesting pictures,

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you shouldn't try to make them.

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So I stopped -

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This is a photography that falls
on your doormat every week,

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it is inside the leaflets
of the supermarkets.

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This is how supermarkets
present the meat they offer,

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anybody thinking about photography now?

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Now you think of meat!

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This photography is so uninteresting,

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that you forget photography,
you just think about the subject.

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and that is what makes it
interesting to me.

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(Laughter)

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There is a big realm of things

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to discover in this area of photography.

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These are the ones I love the most.

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Everybody should have
this picture on his desk,

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then you don't have to
crack your brain anymore

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which size is bigger: A4, A3, A6 -

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(Laughter)

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So, I started to collect
this kind of photography,

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but then I had to move
to a smaller apartment,

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I mean, I was a photographer,
I stopped photographies,

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it is going to cost you --

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And to fit in myself,
I had to throw away a lot of stuff,

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and in the meantime,
the piles of uninteresting photographs

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were getting bigger and bigger,

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should I throw away the piles
of uninteresting photographs,

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or should I throw away

156
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the puppets my mother made
in the old-peoples home?

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Every time she made a puppet -

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(Laughter)

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I'm just going to put a jacket
on the remaining time.

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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Every time she made a puppet,

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she would show it to me and then said:

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"Do you like it?" "Mom, it's great!"

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and then she said, of course,
"Do you want to have it?"

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and I said, "Yes, I'd really like
to have it."

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So I got lots of this puppets in my house,

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I held them above the bin,
but I couldn't let loose.

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It felt like betraying my mother's memory.

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Then I thought, memory,
isn't photography about memory?

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So I bought a camera again,

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took pictures of the puppets of my mother,

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held them above the bin
and could let loose.

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In that way I managed
to throw away a lot of stuff.

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(Laughter)

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This is a childhood rocket,

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I mean, what does a big grown up man

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do with this stuff that is for children -

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I didn't throw it away, I gave it away.

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This is my television set,

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people of the television area
don't have to worry,

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it is not going to be any E-trend,

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because it was taken away in a minute.

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I wrote on it : "Steal in order."

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And then I got a phone call
from Foam Magazine,

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it is an international,
notorious photography magazine,

186
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and they said, "We heard that you are
in the possession of a camera again,"

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I said, "Yes, I have to confess,

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I am in the possession of a camera again."

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"What do you do with it?"

190
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I said, "Well, I just take pictures
of things I throw away,"

191
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(Laughter)

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And they said, "We would like to see it"

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And before I knew,
I had 24 pages in this magazine

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on things I threw away.

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(Applause)

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This, I didn't throw away,

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I found out that you can use
photography also

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to prevent you from buying things
you don't really need.

199
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(Laughter)

200
00:11:04,911 --> 00:11:06,073
Yeah.

201
00:11:06,073 --> 00:11:09,955
I managed to postpone
buying this computer for a year,

202
00:11:09,955 --> 00:11:15,352
I just waited until a spilled
a cup of coffee on the old one.

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00:11:15,352 --> 00:11:19,999
And it was published
in the beginning of 2008,

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the title was
"Photography against consumerism."

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00:11:24,027 --> 00:11:27,693
A few months later,
the credit crisis started,

206
00:11:27,693 --> 00:11:32,058
so you can see what you can achieve
with photography?

207
00:11:32,058 --> 00:11:35,378
If you skip the painting -

208
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So, I was back in business again,
but not really,

209
00:11:37,729 --> 00:11:39,533
I was not really back in business,

210
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because I wasn't going to look
for the next subject,

211
00:11:42,115 --> 00:11:44,966
and project, and theme
and series and whatever,

212
00:11:44,966 --> 00:11:47,350
it just happened
that I wanted to throw away stuff

213
00:11:47,350 --> 00:11:49,108
and photography seemed to help,

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so I just took pictures of it,

215
00:11:50,767 --> 00:11:53,521
I wasn't interested
in making interesting pictures,

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00:11:53,521 --> 00:11:57,004
I was just interested
in throwing away stuff.

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00:11:57,004 --> 00:11:58,688
So, then you start wondering,

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00:11:58,688 --> 00:12:01,594
"What makes a picture interesting?"

219
00:12:01,594 --> 00:12:05,127
Do you think
this is an interesting picture?

220
00:12:05,127 --> 00:12:08,016
It was taken half a year ago,

221
00:12:08,016 --> 00:12:12,479
a boy shot in a school,
teachers and fellow students

222
00:12:12,479 --> 00:12:14,739
and then he shot himself,

223
00:12:14,739 --> 00:12:18,425
and among the things
people put in front of the school,

224
00:12:18,425 --> 00:12:21,054
there was this panel in the background

225
00:12:21,054 --> 00:12:25,085
in English it says, "God, where were you?"

226
00:12:25,085 --> 00:12:29,860
Well, those questions
are not easy to answer.

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00:12:30,983 --> 00:12:32,976
There was another question as well,

228
00:12:32,976 --> 00:12:35,265
"Warum", which means "Why", in English,

229
00:12:35,265 --> 00:12:39,600
which is even more difficult to answer,

230
00:12:39,600 --> 00:12:44,330
and here we have
the mysterious creator of this panels

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00:12:44,330 --> 00:12:46,296
by the looks of him,

232
00:12:46,296 --> 00:12:50,305
he is not so interested
in answering the questions

233
00:12:50,305 --> 00:12:54,083
but more in need of some attention.

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00:12:54,083 --> 00:12:56,358
And that is what he was going to get.

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00:12:56,358 --> 00:13:00,279
(Laughter)

236
00:13:01,956 --> 00:13:04,784
But I was wondering -
I have seen this guy before -

237
00:13:04,784 --> 00:13:07,384
and, do you know, the "R" in this panels

238
00:13:07,384 --> 00:13:09,745
and the question mark are very strange?

239
00:13:09,745 --> 00:13:12,124
in "Warum" as well,

240
00:13:12,124 --> 00:13:14,745
So, I did some research
and I came across -

241
00:13:14,745 --> 00:13:16,343
do you remember, a year ago,

242
00:13:16,343 --> 00:13:19,029
this guy who put his daughter
in a basement

243
00:13:19,029 --> 00:13:21,014
and made children with her in Austria? -

244
00:13:21,014 --> 00:13:26,030
Frittzel - this is his house,

245
00:13:26,030 --> 00:13:28,836
and this is the mysterious creator,

246
00:13:28,836 --> 00:13:32,049
and now he writes,
"How ever could it come to this?"

247
00:13:32,049 --> 00:13:34,030
and the "Warum" again is showed weirdly,

248
00:13:34,030 --> 00:13:37,904
it's something like "not again."

249
00:13:37,904 --> 00:13:40,100
And still, this was not his coming out,

250
00:13:40,100 --> 00:13:45,077
his coming out was in 2007,
December the 17th,

251
00:13:45,077 --> 00:13:48,010
it was also in Germany,

252
00:13:48,010 --> 00:13:53,147
here, this woman had shot herself
and her children

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00:13:53,147 --> 00:13:55,970
and he put "Warum" and the old panels
in front of the house,

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on the pavement,

255
00:13:58,226 --> 00:14:03,341
and two days later he managed
to get them next to the door.

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But this is not the end.

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Do you remember this year Queen's Day?

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The third of April,
this guy bumped into the crowd,

259
00:14:11,284 --> 00:14:14,158
and bumped into the monuments,

260
00:14:14,158 --> 00:14:17,062
among the things people put there

261
00:14:17,062 --> 00:14:19,967
to show their sympathy -

262
00:14:19,967 --> 00:14:24,130
(Laughter)

263
00:14:28,422 --> 00:14:31,016
Well, in a purely aesthetical, formal way,

264
00:14:31,016 --> 00:14:33,002
this is not beautiful photography,

265
00:14:33,002 --> 00:14:35,006
but there is something else in it,

266
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there is something to discover,
there is something to find.

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00:14:41,005 --> 00:14:43,004
And that is what we can call beauty too

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00:14:43,004 --> 00:14:44,586
but it's another kind of beauty,

269
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it's not a beauty
of the old fashioned painting,

270
00:14:46,932 --> 00:14:49,159
but it is a beauty
of the scientific discovery,

271
00:14:49,159 --> 00:14:51,878
of the [mathemathical] formula,

272
00:14:51,878 --> 00:14:56,219
of the simple solution
to a complicated problem,

273
00:14:56,219 --> 00:14:59,065
of investigation.

274
00:14:59,065 --> 00:15:02,007
And suddenly I found myself
writing for "De Volkskrant,"

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it is a big dutch newspaper,

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00:15:05,041 --> 00:15:10,013
analysing pictures in this
investigative way that I just showed you.

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00:15:10,013 --> 00:15:15,453
And this is what I wrote
about the "Warum" guy

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00:15:16,745 --> 00:15:19,706
and I was very happy that every week

279
00:15:19,706 --> 00:15:22,083
I could tell my story about photography

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00:15:22,083 --> 00:15:24,020
in a different, not-paintily way,

281
00:15:24,020 --> 00:15:25,738
but it was one drawback,

282
00:15:25,738 --> 00:15:27,936
and it was that I only could show
one picture

283
00:15:27,936 --> 00:15:29,454
I couldn't show my research,

284
00:15:29,454 --> 00:15:31,024
and then "De Volkskrant" came up

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00:15:31,024 --> 00:15:35,057
with a very simple solution
to this complicated problem.

286
00:15:35,057 --> 00:15:39,681
They gave me two pages
instead of half a page,

287
00:15:39,681 --> 00:15:44,242
so now I can analyze
complete stories on photography

288
00:15:49,412 --> 00:15:51,471
I've got more space for my research

289
00:15:51,471 --> 00:15:54,000
and I've got more space for myself,

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00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:56,035
because I earn a bit more money,

291
00:15:56,035 --> 00:15:59,063
and I've moved to a bigger apartment.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)