Hans van der Kamp » Video

Seattle Erotic Art Festival

HvdK — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:19:03 +0000

For many reasons I was not able to make it to SEAF, where three of my works were exhibited. It was really nice to spot one in the wonderful video above. Since that particular picture is not on my site yet, I am posting it below.

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Working on a Dutch blog

HvdK — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:18:57 +0000

I am currently working on a Dutch blog. It is far from finished but I have already posted a few pages.
Additionally I am working on the translation of the interface and a links directory. (Yes, I know there is a Dutch WordPress, but it is a little behind in updates.)

You can find it at: http://www.hansvanderkamp.info

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Leonard Cohen – 1966 – This Hour Has Seven Days

HvdK — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:22:15 +0000

I believe it was in the late 1970s when I was part of a team of journalists as a photographer to interview Canadian born singer, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen. He was not in a very talkative mood and he had a hard time with cameras being pointed at him. Actually his Dutch record distributor had made up a list of so many restrictions that I just looked over the shoulder of a colleague for a minute or two to head home again without taking one single picture. I was more than disappointed. I knew most of his lyrics by heart and for some reason I had thought he would read that off my face, allowing me to come closer with my camera. Instead a security guard pushed me to the back row. When I found this early interview on YouTube I realized how Cohen had become the demanding artist he was by the time I first saw him many years later.

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A Winter Straw Ride (1906)

HvdK — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:56:09 +0000

[See post to watch Flash video]

As a collector of material related to photography and film I have gathered a lot of very early movies on my hard drives. I love this material, but I do often find it tiring to watch very long silent movies, because I am used to today’s editing techniques. Somehow the rhythm of the scenes, especially in early 1900s movies is a bit too slow for me.

Just yesterday, while mining Usenet for old material, I stumbled upon an old short entitled A Winter Straw Ride, made in 1906 and I was surprised to see scenes following up on each other in a rhythm that is almost modern. Maybe one could even describe it as ‘action packed’. The photography is brilliant too. It is hard to work in the snow, using black & white material. Either the whites start to lose detail, or the darker shapes lose most of their grays.

I could not find any information on the director or the camera crew, just that the film was produced by the Edison company.

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Betty Boop Movies

HvdK — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:40:03 +0000

By the time I was finished building the new Amea Vintage Movies site, I had seen so many Burlesque Queens of the 1950s that I could recognize Virginia Bell just by the shape of her pubic hair and I only needed one close up of a nipple to see that the breast belonged to 1950s Playmate Elaine Reynolds.

I was also amazed how large my collection of vintage movies had become over the years. It made me wonder where it all started. Somewhere around age 10, I guess, when I fell madly in love with Betty Boop.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Didn’t I promise some time ago that this weblog was never going to be a video blog? I just could not resist it, I guess.

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The Origin of Aids

HvdK — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 03:10:28 +0000

The other day I received a call from my old editor in chief. He wanted me to burn a DVD with the documentary The Origin of Aids, as posted on Google Video, before it was removed once again as the result of legal actions. I figured this would be easy, since Google offers a download link. Apparently they stopped doing so. It is a good thing our friendship goes back to the late Seventies, because I ended up spending most of my Saturday trying different video ripping techniques without success, until I ran into this little tools called Google Video Grabber 4.3.2.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Somewhere around midnight I had compiled a DVD. Unsatisfied with the results I did some extra data mining in order to come up with a video file of a larger resolution. No luck at p2p sites unless I could accept the fact that this particular download takes ages, so I returned to using search engine techniques.

In the meantime I had seen the documentary and I was horrified by the facts presented. Although the video delivers no definitive proof for the theory that polio vaccines used in Africa indirectly transported the virus from apes to humans, there are enough facts and contradicting statements made by the scientists involved to seriously consider the option that other more common theories could very well be inaccurate.

When I saw the documentary listed on AOL.com as a Conspiracy Theory, I was annoyed. Why is it, I asked myself, that the last few journalists who actually take the time and the effort to do some old fashioned research, are always labeled as conspirators? I mean, I have as much faith in journalists as I have in politicians, but I would certainly give representatives of either group the benefit of the doubt above scientists working for the Pharmaceutical industry. This may very well be a personal hang up, but I decided to post this documentary anyway, hoping that others would have a look at it to judge for themselves.

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The computer as a studio

HvdK — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:23:53 +0000

When I complained to dear Sylvaine that I missed my photo studio, she simply answered that her computer was her studio. She had me thinking about that for days. The studio is a place where I control light and background. Photoshop can do that too; so she is absolutely right.

Lately I was asked to participate in Harvest 2007 where I will be one of the very few photographers who worries about the physical integrity of a photograph. The show is in Atlanta, Georgia, right in the middle of the US Bible belt. I was not allowed to show genitalia in my work and I was shocked to see how many of my pictures do, but looking at the works presented on the web site I had to admit that there is absolutely nothing wrong with composing or recomposing images with the help of a computer. My camera is a small computer too, so why should I make that distinction?

A digital camera does all sorts of things with reality; it changes the perspective, it fucks with histograms at the owner’s convenience, so why all this nostalgia about an old fashioned camera with a negative? I do not know anymore. I thought I did a few years ago when I posted a few rants here about photographs being manipulated too much and too often to be called photographs any longer. I guess I am just getting old.

Three days ago I posted my short movie Smoke on the MySpace site of the Rome Film Fest to see if my work would come through the first selection. In order to do so I had to create my own MySpace site first and I did so after a lot of cursing over Microsoft’s approach to web content.

I tried to do some networking for AMEA while I was at it and I was amazed about the creativity of artists producing erotica while at the same time not being allowed to post real nudity. I soon found out that a naked behind is not considered nudity, breasts are also okay as long as there are no nipples visible. What’s the fun of breasts without nipples? And what is so obscene about breasts in the first place? They completely lost me. For a moment I considered photoshopping two nipples on an ass to see if my site would be censored because of that.

Instead I just went on with life.

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An American Mona Lisa

HvdK — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:07:05 +0000

[See post to watch Flash video]

Once in a while I make an animation to post it at CamDogs and YouTube. Usually the clip depicts an animal reading poetry. Some people think I do not like literature or poetry very much, but I do.

It is easy to generate more than a thousand views on a Gorilla reading Charles Bukowski, whereas the poem itself posted anywhere on the Internet would not get that kind of attention. As far as I can see I am promoting literature instead of ridiculing it. A lot of people think differently, so I get flamed often for my good intentions.

I had anticipated responses like that with my “American Mona Lisa”, where I added the voice of one of the Sharon Tate killers, devout follower of Charles Manson, to this rock solid art icon. Nothing happened. Nobody is interested. I believe the video received a 100 clicks in one month, so I am shamelessly plugging it here.

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Some Romance

HvdK — Fri, 11 May 2007 16:00:19 +0000

[See post to watch Flash video]

The Sheik (1921) starring Rudolph Valentino as Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan who abducts Lady Diana Mayo, played by Agnes Ayres.

In a way this film is the perfect illustration for my previous post. Nothing much changed really; the Arabs are referred to as savages instead of terrorists. And their attitude towards women was cause for debate back then, just as it is today.

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Censor Billy C.

HvdK — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:16:34 +0000

[See post to watch Flash video]

A friend runs a site with xxx adult content. Of course he needs a payment processor and so he filled in the usually forms at ccBill; the most common payment processor for that kind of content. Little did he know that he was going to be reviewed with a thoroughness that borders on neurotic. Within 24 hours he received a long list of pictures and links that needed to be removed before his site could join the payment program.

According to Billy C. the girls on pages 256, 457, 832 and 902 looked kind of young and the page linking to a site – containing a link to yet another site – was linking to content Billy did not approve of. Etc. Etc. It was a fucking phone book of adjustments. I mean, I know what he is going through — as an adult Webmaster it is hard to check all of your own content. Believe me, all that fucking gets very, very boring if you have to look at it day in day out.

Earlier on I had some problems with ccBill myself because they wanted me to remove the painting Leda and the Swan at AMEA, because in their vision that was considered to be bestiality. I have a dirty mind, but I would have never thought of that Swan to.. Never mind, it is just too damn stupid.

In the mid-nineties we had hosting services and search engines who thought they were omnipotent and they would block whatever content they felt like blocking and now the payment processors and the cable companies seem to feel that they are the ones who should control the web.

It is my strong conviction that in *all* cases the Webmaster and the site owner should be held responsible for content. If third parties think certain content is illegal they should inform the local police or file a lawsuit. If they do not have a real case, they should simply be quiet and do what they are best at; leaning back and receiving kickbacks on transactions of people who happen to work for a living. That is how grownups deal with the same issues in printed media.

I have always mistrusted people who have such a keen eye for girls being over or under 18. To me all women under the age of 30 look like they are way too young to take part in an adult movie, but that’s just me, I guess.

Have you ever noticed how often child porn crusaders later turn out to be producers of child porn? Just as often as sport coaches and Catholic priests are child abusers. I know one thing; if I would suffer from that mental illness called pedophilia and needed a good excuse to look for child pornography on the web; I would certainly join the vice squad or the staff of ccBill. Every day of the week you have all the goodies you can lay your hands on without taking the risk to get caught.

This is the only reasonable explanation why ccBills reviews of sites are so unbelievably thorough. They must be pedophiles themselves. Mark my words; before this decade is over we will read about the staff of ccBill being arrested for the distribution of child porn.

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