About GAF van Baalen

GAF studied at Willem de Koning Art Academy in Rotterdam and the Rochester Institute of technology (US) (1991-1995). Both in animation and photography. Both analogue, both approached as a fine-art medium.

I loved doing photography. I really enjoyed the technical aspect of it very much in that period. I liked the detail that large and mid-format cameras provide. Spending days in the darkroom trying to perfect black and white printing. At RIT the photographic facilities were magnificent. This excelled my technical ability's.  Back at the academy in Rotterdam, I had to deal with limited darkroom facilities and limited funds. This led to the abandonment of my photographic ambitions. For the next 23 years, I was co-owner and game-director of a serious game development studio. In these years I hardly touched a camera. I reconnected with my photography after years of absence. Picking up the threads where I left off.

GAF is still in awe of the aesthetics and technical perfection of traditional American landscape photographers, but also inspired by the impact of the New Topographics movement on the course of landscape photography and photography as an art form. He finds himself drawn to landscape or human environments, observing how society interacts with them, how they are used or sometimes abused, and the traces they leave behind. He observes how they are made or how they are given back to nature, exploring areas where one use of the landscape overlaps with another, including the metaphorical wastelands in between, sometimes intended and sometimes not. He observes and filters elements out of reality, trying to find the unusual within the usual. He lets himself be guided by the flow of the moment and empties his mind to simply see and register what is around him in his own way.
In doing so, he is slow. His work is seldom depending on the 'decisive moment'. He works digitally but with an analogue mindset, predominantly framing his shots in his camera and not in post. He takes his time to consider each shot and limits himself from manipulating images to stay true to the authenticity of the moment. In that sense, details are important to him. Humans are often absent in his work, as if they were included, they almost always become the dominant subject in the image.
And the I break my own rules.