I am not a traveler by nature. 

Pool Andries, curator, photo historian, FoMu Antwerp, BE.

The call of the tropics does not have me in its grip. What is strange and unprecedented does not exert any special attraction on me. I prefer to focus my attention, curiosity and urge for knowledge on the near, the everyday and the familiar. A reality that we are part of. That which we ourselves have given individually or collectively, and which nonetheless continues to intrigue, time and again to our capacity for understanding, our urge for deeper meaning is escaped. The ordinary as inscrutable, and therefore just so challenging mystery.

For that reason, travel photographs can usually only fascinate me. Their story and their message usually seem too simplistic. They show the exotic, that which is strange, different, and therefore usually remains misunderstood. They accept the strange as strange, the other as different, the not understood as incomprehensible. Throughout the description of the unprecedented, the strange, they define in the first place the already distinguished, the familiar. In the end they only confirm the photographer's own right, their own safety, their own comfort. Nothing is questioned. Nothing substantial is revealed. Travel photography rarely sows unrest. She is unable to take the viewer out of balance. After all, the positions are too clear and clear, and unchangeable. One-way traffic. The viewer dominates the situation. His motivation, and also his excuse, is the wonder.

The contemplated reality does not get space or freedom, should be allowed to submit to this presumptuous glance, act of exploitation and appropriation. There is no dialogue between subject and object. Distances between the two are not bridged but confirmed.

The photographs by Theo Derksen, however, fascinate me. Even though they were made during distant journeys, and they originated in places with exotic sounding names, travel photographs, understood in the sense described above, I can not and will not mention them. Whoever wishes to consider them as such, in my opinion, passes on their most essential qualities. To demonstrate this, I propose a small exercise. We undertake an effort to view these photos by ignoring their descriptive, documentary content. We forget names and places, date and time of the depicted. Let us focus on photographic images, on what happens in these abstract spaces. After all, photographs create their own worlds. They are frameworks in which forms and objects are arranged, inter-related and placed in a new, suggestive context.

The photographs by Theo Derksen, however, fascinate me. Even though they were made during distant journeys, and they originated in places with exotic sounding names, travel photographs, understood in the sense described above, I can not and will not mention them. Whoever wishes to consider them as such, in my opinion, passes on their most essential qualities. To demonstrate this, I propose a small exercise. We undertake an effort to view these photos by ignoring their descriptive, documentary content. We forget names and places, date and time of the depicted. Let us focus on photographic images, on what happens in these abstract spaces. After all, photographs create their own worlds. They are frameworks in which forms and objects are arranged, inter-related and placed in a new, suggestive context.

Situations, people and objects remain recognizable and suitable in the work of Theo Derksen. Anecdote and coincidence confess their humble origins. But at the same time they seem aware of the important role that the photographer has assigned them. With dignity they act as protagonists in a universal drama. They interpret contents that surpass the local and the instantaneous effortlessly. Everyday situations are translated into metaphors for metaphysical relationships. The individual appears as a reflection and embodiment of the general.

Theo Derksen uses a number of image strategies in a subtle but efficient manner that regularly recur in his work. He uses formal structures that build a relational field of tension between iconographic elements that initially seem to coincidentally coincide. Usually these structures can be understood as a form of juxtaposition. What almost inevitably suggests equality and simultaneity. And consequently also: reversibility. Mutual involvement, without hierarchical coercion or order. The photographs by Theo Derksen seldom have a single, centrally placed motif. On the contrary, the attention is drawn between front and back, characters and decor, left and right, top and bottom, light and dark, open and closed spaces. 

Perhaps this is the greatest quality of this photography: that it succeeds in scraping reality, as it unfolds itself in deceptive wealth for the eye, into representations of worlds that lie behind this reality. Performances that also reach us through the eye, but slowly and surely hook into the mind.

Is the borderline experience in photography.  

Curated by Johan Swinnen.

The photo exhibition "Attack!" is part of the 52nd edition of the Holland Festival at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam. The work of the participating photographers moves at the cutting edge. The central theme is paroxysm, a word referring to the ferocity of borderline experiences and to ultimate attempts to break through one's own imposed frames of mind. Limburg curator Johan Swinnen managed to enlist some renowned international and Belgian photographers for this exhibition: including the Japanese Nobuyoshi Araki and Toshio Shibata, Americans Steve Hart and Duane Michals, Frenchman Jean Baudrillard, Belgians Bart Michielsen, Ben Hansen and Charif Benhelima and Dutch photographers Jo Brunenberg, Theo Derksen.

Johan Swinnen: "Together with Ivo van Hove, artistic director of the Holland Festival, I looked for a way to present these cross-border experiences. You don't live in extremes every day, yet you experience pain, pleasure, you name it. How do you consciously portray something like that? I spent a year seeking out different photographers and discussing with them the relationship between their work and the theme of the expo. In the end, we ended up with 22 photographers. The condition was that they should not be one-day wonders. Their photos must testify to a thorough and in-depth investigation of extremes."

During ATTACK! several lectures took place in De Balie. Among others by the well-known French sociologist / philosopher Jean Baudrillard who also works as an artist at ATTACK! participates. In addition to the images from the exhibition, a publication was published that contains essays by renowned authors such as Jean Baudrillard, Willem Elias, Pool Andries, John Berger, Anne Tucker and Edna O'Brian.

Land van Herle

This book is a collaboration between 

Leo Herberghs - writer/poet  Theo Derksen - photographer

Wind waait boven parkeerplaatsen, slaat de hoek om van een lege straat. Bussen worden gewekt uit hun slaap met reizigers valt nog niet te praten. 

Snel wordt er opgeladen of afgeladen. Winkelmeisjes gaan naar hun kassa. Stadsgedreun komt nader en nader of er een trein over een brug davert. Voetgangers vallen in tochtgaten alsof iemand door een bedding waadt, politiewagens rijden in aller naam. Onder loofbomen ligt de promenade wie er gaat als slaapwandelaar, ziet niet hoe licht groeit op de daken, hoe donker het is in etalages.

Leo Herberghs

De stad heeft een eigen taal, stenen spreken hier, beton, metaal, stadslandschappen zijn het. Cirkels raken andere cirkels, lijnrechte straten hebben allemaal een naam. Wie weet waar hij woont en slaapt kan niet in deze stad verdwalen, terecht komen tussen schapen en paarden.

PAIN ON THE WALL

Drs. Kitty van Loo, Art-historica

PAIN ON THE WALL

We are looking at portraits of people. Their diacritical signs have been affected. The motives for this defacement are a, yet the fragmentary remains of these portraits reveal underlying structures.In fact, another wall, disclosing a new dimension, appears: that of aesthetic perception. To be sure, scratches and tears diminish the portrait-function of these faces, but at the same time they intensify observation. They alert one to perceive more than what is actually shown. They evoke all kinds of associations and create new connections with the reality of the observation. Since the Romantic era the arts put great value on the fragmentary.

The fragment can, as representative of a whole, speak more truthfully than reality itself. The torso portraits from Caïro, Alexandria, Beijing, Arles invite reflection: about personal identity, about the corrosion of portraiture and about other, non-contextual levels of meaning. Theo Derksen registers these portraits intrusively: as documents and as imaginative works of art, meanwhile allowing the aesthetic function of the fragment to come centre stage.       

PRORA KDF

Seebad Prora / KDF Prora

In the early 1930s, the government of the day gave the go-ahead for the construction of a large complex for the recreation of German soldiers at the front. The special recreation hotel had to accommodate 20,000 working-class convalescents. It could also be used as a hospital at times.

A competition was held for the construction of the complex and several designs were proposed, Adolf Hitler already had some favourite architects and in the end the design of Clemens Klotz was chosen. On 2 May 1936, the German Labour Front (DAF) began work on the Kraft durch Freude complex. The KDF is part of the DAF government agency

KDF, was a travel agency set up by the German government to enable the working class to book cheap trips to various destinations in Germany. If you did a good job, you were rewarded with a trip. It was possible to book trips to concerts, operas and various day trips through the KDF. At a later stage, a cruise ship was built for KDF (Willem Gustloff). The architect Klotz drew up a plan for a complex for more than 20,000 people, where every guest would be treated equally and every room would have a sea view. The complex would consist of 4 huge buildings, each about 500 metres long. There would be a total of 10,000 double rooms. In addition to the facilities, there would be a pier between each building with restaurants, 2 wave pools, a theatre, a cinema and a banquet hall for more than 25,000 visitors. The 10,000 rooms in the complex were all the same size, with a single room measuring 5 by 2.5 metres. Each room had beds, a sitting area and a sink. Showers and toilets were in the wings, where the stairs were also located.

Theo Derksen, Photographs             Marcel Van Hoef, Paintings

Van Hoef's work is under development, yet he wanted a new impulse. The process in painting usually takes place in the isolation of the studio. There the impressions and ideas are processed in a specific theme, with a specific technique. The development consists in that the theme and technique are tried out, improved, slightly modified and repeated again. Until the theme has been worked out in that particular way, it has been completed and there is nothing left to add. And then - sometimes with a long interruption - something new comes about. And the process starts again. In his progress, painting is actually varying on a theme. Many painters work in series, or there is a certain 'period' in their work afterwards.

Van Hoef was looking for a break through of this cycle. He sought an artistic impulse from outside. It is improvised as music with more musicians: the pattern is fixed, at least one knows each other's background, repertoire and often the way of playing. 

Within that pattern of the more or less familiar, an unpredictable result develops because the musicians react to each other and that result is richer than when playing solo.Something similar is involved in the project of the painter Marcel van Hoef and the photographer Theo Derksen. Marcel van Hoef has known the photographer Theo Derksen for some time. Derksen took care of him, among other things, the photography of the catalog of his exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Roermond in 2003.

The procedure they have followed is special. Each started at the same time with a work. The one with a photo, the other with a painting. Then they gave this work to each other with a request for a response. And they have exchanged this reaction again and they have asked for a reaction, and so on. They have taken three months for that. This resulted in two series of 16 works consisting of 8 photos and 8 paintings in four years.

Life as if you are always on the road

Marcel van Hoef and Theo Derksen make their art from a common base, reality shows itself to them as an image, something to look at. The painter and photographer make a selection from this. Both place reality in a framework. And in the selection they have a shared predilection that you could call a common theme: that is the question of what change is.

For van Hoef, that is the fascination for metamorphosis, the slow, sometimes sudden, transformation of a place. He named the exhibition and catalog of 2003 Genius Loci, the spirit or nature of the place: it is true that things can change at or in one place, but there remains a certain kind of presence. Shadows often appear in his paintings, which, if you look at them, give the impression of the moment and at the same time suggest a standstill of time, the time is frozen in it or solidifies. But shadows do not stand still, they are on the contrary very temporary, shadows literally change within a minute. The gardens, the fragments or the cut-outs of a built-up environment or a landscape, all of them frozen are at least silent, almost immobile. The experience of time or its absence is his theme.

Theo Derksen shares with Marcel the fascination for change. He travels a lot, his photography bears witness to that. Yet his photography is not a documentary travel report. It is wonder. Not the surprise of the tourist "look at something weird, very different from us", but the wonder of a child who sees and does not attach a meaning to it, but who is already looking very lightly wondering what this may be and continues to do without giving an equal answer. The child has the wondered look.

We see people in Derksen's photography in situations that are not specific to one specific place. You do not know what or where it is. And even on closer inspection, an unambiguous meaning is to be expected. The effect is that you keep looking. Like a child. That is how Theo Derksen looks. He looks as if he is traveling, even when he is at home. It is an art to live as if one is always traveling. Meanings are not fixed, but shift. They change over time, but also by changing places, by traveling. Opening yourself up to a world in which meanings change, that seems to be what Derksen poses to himself and the viewer. The combination, I would like to say the combination, with the painting of Marcel van Hoef reinforces the searching and questioning character of his photography.

Drs. R. Hoekstra, Curator Museum Roermond

GRID WEERT

TELL ME WHO YOU ARE

Theo Derksen tells stories in image and sound. With the thought 'Show me your room I say who you are', he drew a grid over the map of Weert with the Martinus Church as zero point. At the intersections of this grid, sometimes a living room, sometimes in nature, he took photographs. It was not so much about the residents as about the places and places where they live. 

He always presented these photographs as a triptych, so he could also show something of the geographical and sociological context. 

Emile Hollman, journalist & writer.

An exhibition was shown at Museum W, Weert

KODAK & POLAROID

Experimental still-life photos I made between 1985 and 1988. 

My experiments resulted in a series of images for which I received the International Kodak-Award in 1988. But it all started with a Polaroid Grand. All photographs were shot on polaroid neg-pos materiaal and on Kodak film with a 4x5 inch camera. These photographs are in the Polaroid Photo - and the Kodak Collection

KODAK AWARD

KODAK AWARD 1988

For this work I received the Kodak Award. This award was handed out by the CEO of Kodak in Rochester. In addition this work was presented at the Houston PhotoFest, USA and added to the Kodak Photo Collection. In addition I was granted with a sponsorship

BODY ART

From anonymity to intimacy.

Every day, numerous individuals pass by. These are people with whom one does not have a personal relationship and about whom one knows very little. One may look at them, but not always with a conscious and deliberate intention. The majority of passers-by do not demand one's attention. The initial concept of my photographic series is the unconventional adornment of the body, frequently concealed beneath clothing. By "exposing" oneself, a sense of intimacy is fostered. In triptychs of images, captured on the skin and at close range, the individual reveals their "secret," thereby transcending anonymity.

A triptych of each subject's creation is presented in photographic form. The central image is in black and white and depicts the subject as they might be encountered in real life. The two side panels are in colour and focus on the intimacy of the body. As the series progresses, the anonymity of the subjects gradually disappears, and the mystery of their identities becomes more apparent.

The world around the corner

W.K.COUMANS 

Art-critic

My dead child possessed a spine, given to her by mother nature, with red stars, which I liked to kiss. Now that my love has disappeared, so has the back.

Two stars in the profession, Jo Brunenberg and Theo Derksen had to put it in Weert alone and with the artificial, not natural. There is work to be done, the phenomenon of body decoration increases every day. Weert may be fortunate enough to be so early, by commissioning two photographers of significance to make a free photographic study of this all-hidden behavior of man. They had to go far and strange, to get back to their home-town. There usually had to be a long journey, to see the world, while their residence was around the corner. Weert was in the world, the world had in some way taken root. Weert was from the world, it turned out.

Two thinking photographers who, in their search for the image that has to give a solution, do not shun the ways of resistance. But the "models" also had their pain. I understand the word, the beautiful word piercing, and I understand the words of my mother: "who wants to be beautiful with pain".

And that was all, my conviction, wanted to be beautiful. Differ. And yet resemble something. The painting of the naked sheet, in which old rituals are involved, makes today's gods flee.

Photographers and "models" have found each other in discovering and immortalizing the moving image that has to be brought to a standstill. The viewpoints of two photographers, whose work at the same time is brought together or merged, forms a symbiosis or not. Photos of abandonment, homesickness and pain, bear witness to another, intimate world.

Commissioned work.

The Netherlands Architecture is the national subsidy provider for projects in the fields of architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, interior architecture and related disciplines.

The fund does not participate in construction, but promotes reflection and debate about architecture. Free University of Amsterdam, Architectural History Foundation (SAG). The aim of the Foundation Architecture (SAG) is to promote architectural historical research in general and in particular research into the history of architecture, urban design and land-scape architecture as formulated in the research programs of the chair area Architectural History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)

APPROACHING NOWHERE 

Text W.Janssen

Special project Musica Sacra 2015 Maastricht.

Approaching Nowhere is the title of the exhibition of the work of Theo Derksen. Trying to approach nowhere sounds like there is a goal, namely finding nowhere. The question is whether we are capable of that. The nowhere is perhaps a useful concept in this case. An idea, therefore, that helps us not to want to be at a certain place / somewhere in a certain period of time.

The photographer Theo Derksen went on the road without having fully planned to arrive somewhere (at a designated place) at a specified time. He has chosen the adventure and is surprised by what he encounters along the way. People, things, a city, landscape, etc .. He recorded all that in 36 photos (selection).

As an artist he can use the images of what he has come across to show us nowhere. In the proverbial sense of the word: you are nowhere, you feel lost. For example, in the desolate of the landscape, in the loneliness of people, the alienating effect of a photographed thing and even of an entire city.

However, Theo Derksen chooses to show his photographs purely as a result of the route he has traveled. No more and no less. He brings the images together in a leporello. Originally a zigzag folded book, for the exhibition elaborated into an impressive installation. The photographs shown on it refer to stories. Stories that the viewer can come up with. For example, we are invited to embrace story telling using the photos shown as a dynamic way of being on the go. Let us be surprised by what we encounter without being immediately on the road. Under the motto Approaching Nowhere we capture images and tell stories

Over a three-year period, I was commissioned by the mayor of Arcen Velden Lomm and subsequently by the governor of Limburg, Mr Frissen, to photograph a selection of special villagers from Arcen Velden Lomm. Each year, during the New Year's meeting, the exhibition was open to residents and was a unique opportunity to see the result. A committee to which I belonged selected the people to be photographed. This resulted in a special project consisting of single, triptychs and diptychs. 

 JING_HANG GRAND CANAL

This project was commissioned by the city of Hangzou, China. During three periods spread over three years we, Dutch and Chinese artists worked together on the Grand Canal Project. Each from a personal perspective. The Grand Canal, known to the Chinese as the Jing-Hang Grand Canal (simplified Chinese: 京杭大运河; traditional Chinese: 京杭大運河; pinyin: Jīng-Háng Dà Yùnhé; lit. "Capital-Hangzhou Grand Canal", or better known as the "Grand Canal"), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the longest canal or man-made river in the world.[1] It begins in Beijing and runs through Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the city of Hangzhou, connecting the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. The oldest parts of the canal date back to the 5th century B.C., but the different sections were first connected during the Sui Dynasty (581-618 A.D.). Dynasties in 1271-1633 significantly restored and rebuilt the canal and changed its route to supply their capital cities. The Grand Canal played a major role in the reunification of North and South China. Built by conscript workers, the canal connected the Yellow River in the north with the Yangtze in the south, making it much easier to transport grain from the south to the centers of political and military power in North China.[2]

The total length of the Grand Canal is 1,776 km (1,104 mi). Its greatest elevation is reached in the mountains of Shandong, at a peak of 42 m (138 ft).[3] Ships in Chinese canals had no trouble reaching higher ground after the pound lock was invented by government official and engineer Qiao Weiyue in the 10th century, during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). [4] The canal has been admired by many throughout history, including the Japanese monk Ennin (794-864), the Persian historian Rashid al-Din (1247-1318), the Korean official Choe Bu (1454-1504) and the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610),[5][6] and others.

Historically, periodic floods of the Yellow River threatened the safety and operation of the canal. In wartime, the high dikes of the Yellow River were sometimes deliberately breached to flood them to sweep away advancing enemy forces. This caused disasters and long-term economic hardship for local residents. Despite temporary periods of desolation and disuse, the Grand Canal promoted an indigenous and growing economic market in China's urban centers from the Sui period to the present. It enabled faster trade and thus improved China's economy. The section south of the Yellow River is still heavily used by barges carrying bulk materials and containers.

Most photos, some commissioned, some self-initiated work, were taken with a technical 4X5’ camera. A small selection of these portraits are part of the BNF (Bibliotheque National de France) photo collection. 

Workers at the Steelmill Globe Weert, 1983. 

Commissioned by their trade union

Commissioned 

by the Gouvernement Limburg, Maastricht.

The general impression of the Limburg landscape is one of romanticism, characterized by half-timbered houses, orchards and rolling hills. This is only a small part of Limburg. This image has been generalized and branded for tourism purposes. As such, redefining it was an option for me in the assignment. 

Commissioned and a self-initiated project

A random selection from various trips in Poland, France, Spain, Portugal.

Kew Gardens and its visitors are like little creatures that have made their home in the bushes and under the trees. They're trying to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible.

While working in Hangzhou in 2015, I tried out a lot of ideas for my Grand Canal project (Hangzhou - Beying).

At night, I walked around shopping malls in Hangzhou and saw the women on life-size advertising posters, illuminated by spotlights. 

In my photographs, I took their faces out of context, a detail of the large billboards. When I saw the result, I was deeply moved by these images. The unexpected beauty of angels emerging from 'earthly' advertising. That was serendipity.

The typical colours came about partly because I photographed my angels at night, and only those illuminated by the backlight of a light box had this heavenly look. During the day they did not succeed! From the beginning, I photographed my angels in a round frame. The round image is common in Chinese art. A tribute to the place where I met them, Hangzhou!