
Kuching, Sarawak, Borneo
Kuching, city of CATS on the island full of jungles and the famous DUTCH (noseeeee) monkeys! We left Perhentian paradise at 8 AM by water taxi to Kuala Besut and ordered a minibus to Kota Bharu airport for 70 ringgit (18…

Jean-Paul Goude: magician of the image
Dream world of Jean-Paul Goude In my head I almost hear Jean-Paul Goude scream: AAAAAND ACTION! Dramatic music from the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) is turned on and a female choir is loudly shrieking melodramatic lines in harmony. Lines which are partly based…

Koos Breukel: photo portraitist of real life
Looking through the lens of Koos Breukel Why? I still ask myself WHY!? Why did I NOT go to the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam during Museumnacht 2 years ago. Apart from the fact that it’s an amazing museum, one of my…

Street art capital: George Town, Penang
Bye Cameron Highlands, hi Penang! George Town, to be more specific! We got up at 7.15 AM, checked out, had breakfast (bananananana pancake!), took the bus at 9 AM and arrived 5 hours later in Malaysia’s street art capital: George…

Beaton & Pollock: The New Soft Look 1951
March 1951. A three-page spread on Jackson Pollock was published in Vogue titled American Fashion: The New Soft Look. Sir Cecil Beaton, one of the most praised British portrait photographers ever, had taken the photos in which Pollock’s radical and dazzling…

Berndnaut Smilde: the cloud creator
Images did and still do have an enormous power over the human psyche. As we examine art images in (especially) world religions, one of the most significant symbols used to express the nature of the divine is the cloud. In Mesopotamian, Egyptian…

Cameron Highlands: Malaysia’s little England
Coolly Cameron Highlands The night before we left Kuala Lumpur for the Cameron Highlands, Thomas and I thought it would be a great idea to go ‘clubbing’ in Changkat Bukit Bintang. This avenue resembles to the Lange Leidsedwarsstraat in Amsterdam, which is only…

Malaysia, Malaysian Borneo and Bali: the journey
Selamat datang ke Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Honeeeeeey, were going to Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo! What do I need to take with me? A couple of shorts, long pants, but not too much because it is HOT out there! Heels? No of…

Bruges in 24 hours
Untouched by time Bruges is by far the best place in Belgium that preserved its totally ancient appearance with its intricate network of canals. Bruges: Venice of the North. A mega cliche, but oh so true. When you wander through the small streets…

Laurent Chehere’s Flying Houses in Paris
Lift me up to the sky One look at the surrealistic series Flying Houses of Laurent Chehere (1972, Paris) and the Pixar movie UP comes to mind. A movie in which a retired man named Carl ties balloons to his…