May 10 2006
Staring back at them
It is spring in Amsterdam and tourists are everywhere. Armed with water bottles and back packs they stroll down the city looking for drugs, sex and a bit of Van Gogh.
I like to take a camera on my rare walks through the city and it is fun photographing tourists. Over the years I must have taken hundreds of shots of tourists photographing their loved ones on canal bridges, on picturesque squares and in front of tourist shops selling wooden shoes. These are snapshots for my own collection, they do not add to anything I photographed. Or maybe they do, but I do not see it.
I stare back at those who stare at me.
Lately however – being a person who never had a relationship lasting longer than 12 years – I am fascinated by couples of my age and older. These are couples that seem to have found equilibrium in their coexistence. Most of them do not look as happy as I expect them to be. Usually they are fighting over the map that she is holding, while he is pretending to be the city scout by yelling: ‘I told you that the Van Gogh was just the opposite direction. You are holding the map upside down!’.
Sometimes they sit meters apart on a terrace, looking quite bored.
And all the aggravation of walking through a city they do not know causes stress – an awful lot of stress.