Hans van der Kamp

For some time now I have been wondering about the concept of friendship. My perception of this wonderful and mysterious interaction between humans is under constant devaluation because I spend too much time on the Internet. An Internet friend is someone who is sharing your interests, nothing more and nothing less. They occasionally send nice messages, usually with a link to their own site to draw some traffic, and for the rest they could not care less if you live or die.

I like it that way.

On a community web site one can have 300 friends without sweat. It’s superficial of course, because when these friendships grow into something more elaborate; one immediately has to deal with the complications of virtuality, such as different languages, the usual misinterpretations of e-mail, etc.

In real life having two or three real friends is a considerable investment of time and energy and if I look back, I must admit that my friends often treated me worse than my enemies. Holding on to that thought I must also face that I have probably done the same. I am not the one who sings “Non, je ne regrette rien” or “My Way” under the shower. I have some sincere regrets. By studying my wrongdoings I can easily find good reasons why, but that is beside the point. There is always an excuse and if there is none available; we humans will certainly produce one.

That is what seperates us from animals — more than intellect.

I am sure my friend Sylvaine has a perfectly good reason to describe me on her blog as a person suffering from the Stockholm syndrome. I am fully aware that a lot of people consider me to be suffering from one or two mental diseases and they are absolutely right. For those who are really concerned; I will gladly mail a PDF with the exact diagnosis, based on 20 years of therapy. It is a list of mental dysfunctions, but the Stockholm syndrome is simply not on it and even if it were I would not consider it to be a nice gesture if somebody would post my medical data on his or her blog.

Apparently there is something tricky about friendship. Maybe it is the mirror effect. In our selection of friends we search for common interests, goals, opinions etc. If we become successful at that we find a person who is so much alike that he or she soon becomes irritating. This sounds contradictory, but it seems we do not always like ourselves enough to spend too much time with our mirror image(s).

I may be a medically certified nutcase; but I am not without pride. I am certainly not ashamed of my mental aberrations and I have pretty much learned how to live with who I am after 52 years of struggle. Fighting mental disease is a top sport that requires persistence, endurance and commitment until the last breath.

When I am on the edge of losing this battle I always remind myself of the fact that 80% of the misery on this planet is caused by people who consider themselves to be in good mental health.

My Spanish is not good enough to fully comprehend what is happening on the following blog;

Piezas de Habacuc

I see a dog roped to an iron thread, looking out on dog biscuits glued to a wall, unreachable for him of course. The dog is so starved and flea infested that he has started to scratch and bite his skin with such vigor that the wounds are horrifying.

It is an art exhibit; a performance.. I think I get the message the artist is sending out; our disgust is enormous, while at the same time we try to ignore what is happening to many if not most Middle and South Americans.

Everybody is a critic of course. Somebody wrote: hijo de puta!! / no eres nada de artista!! / eres un asesino !! That I fully understand: Son of a whore!! / you are no artist!! / you are an assassin!! (I speak Prostitute Spanish.)

I am not confused because the pictures sickened me. Dogs are to me what cows are to Buddhists, so I am obviously upset. I am confused because only a few days ago I posted this video on camdogs.com of Neo Nazis smashing up Andres Serrano’s pictures — and now I feel like slaughtering an artist instead of his art.

Is it because artists make us reflect, or is our competitive society so much out of control that we need another horrifying marketing stunt every week to give some artist his or her (un)deserved media publicity? I think I already know the answer; there is nothing confusing about that. I am so confused because I seem to be part of that process.

PS: I kept following the comments on that blog and found a text of an American who spelled “concentration camp” as “consecration camp”. I am going to file these words as the worst Freudian slip I have seen in my entire life.

I close my eyes and I see breasts. I open my eyes, look out the window and again I see breasts. That would have been normal if I was living on the ground floor of a beach house, but I live in an old building in Amsterdam on the fourth floor and my view consists of chimneys, clouds, roofs and pigeon shit, lots of pigeon shit, no breasts.

Why am I having these visions? Well, somebody made a remark about my erotic photographs being at least four years old and I felt challenged by that remark. I honestly do not know why. I was doing fine; I was photographing whatever I felt like photographing without focusing on theme, composition, perspective, interpretation, exhibits or publications. In fact I was getting closer to my camera than ever before. The results may not have been very impressive in the eyes of the art critic or the voyeur, but I was doing fine.

The person who was so observant to note that all my erotic photographs were at least four years old, was accurate. I photograph what is part of my life and four years ago I lost my appetite for sleeping around. Believe it or not, but this dirty old fool was getting sentimental about carnal pleasures. I get all choked up just typing this — but I am living the life of a faithful man.

Nobody who really knows me is going to actually believe this and that is understandable. Never trust anything that is written, photographed or filmed and you shall live a long and happy life, my grandfather used to say.

Just a few moments ago I was watching a very old interview with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and they were asked how they felt. The singer replied: “Well, we are sitting in the sun and we just had our dicks sucked off, so we are fine!” I guess that same attitude marked my life from my 16th up to my 49th and that was okay until one day I woke up with the idea that it had all been enough. For 33 years I had been looking for something; that little bit extra that had lacked in all my relationships with the finest of lovers and I guess I saw no point in looking any further. If that little bit extra had actually existed, I would have certainly found it. Statistics do not lie.

But what is a man like me - whose work is and has always been about sex and more sex - going to do with an attitude like that? Right! Getting closer to my camera, paying server bills, doing some site maintenance and listening to the stories of his lover coming home from work. So, like an old rocker asked to sing at the 30th anniversary of his band’s split-up, I decided to go on stage one more time — producing new material for a solo exhibit to be held in 2008.

I had little knowledge of where I was heading. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to photograph women, no younger than 40. A friend with a lot of contacts arranged 8 models and off I went. My lover joined me just to protect me from regressing to my normal behavior and it was really nice to have her with me, but there was really no need to shield me from the models or the models from me. God, I was so nervous!

According to my log I did 24 sessions in just over two weeks, downing countless bottles of South African white wine to work up the courage, and all that resulted in about 720 photographs. The ordeal is far from over yet, another 10 models are planned for the coming months.

I should be selecting the material I have already shot, but I am too afraid to even have a quick look at it. I know what these images will look like. Nice women, warm women looking into the lens of an overweight middle-aged photographer. Keywords: Empathy, Pity, and Amazement.

Still, I will not give up. Next January my new HansVanDerKamp.com will be up and running and all material will be new!