Dog & Company

When the world was confronted with the Covid pandemic, the associated "social distancing" rules had a direct impact: Photographing close to people was no longer possible.

So I decided to take a different approach: instead of focusing on people, I went looking for dogs on the Scheveningen beach and boulevard, which is close to where I live. And I decided for safety reasons that the dogs always needed to be between me and their company (the one walking their dog). This approach with the dog as the main subject soon provided sufficient inspiration and grew into this project "Dog & Company".

For me, a special dimension of this project has been the personal contacts I made in this strange time. Time and again it surprised me that as soon as I asked someone if I could photograph his or her dog, most of them started to tell spontaneously about their 'company' and without realizing it, they allowed me to make an interesting shot... I often was getting closer to people than I was before this pandemic. Not so much physically, but even more so emotionally.