Project info: For 16 days rail workers have been working day and night to finish the job before the train service should be up and running on the next Monday morning. Beautiful impromptu film sets with bright artificial lighting, orange working suits, fire, smoke and drizzle were erected along the site.
Client: Autonomous
Media: Photography
Project info: Viganj, a small coastal village in Southern Croatia is one of Europe’s top surfing destinations. Windsurfers, kiters and foilers enjoy the strong and consistent Maestral wind blowing through the straight between the Peljesac Peninsula and Korcula island. Surfing Viganj explores the surf culture of this local surfing gem.
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Client: Autonomous
Media: Photography
Project info: Spread in Dutch newspaper NRC on the living situation of Spanish migrant workers in a monastery in The Netherlands. The story was published in NRC’s weekend edition, on the website and app and the photography Instagram channel ‘In Beeld’. The text reads:
After work, they go to the monastery
It can be chilly in the monastery. Despite the fact that spring is coming up. Guerra Arroyo (26) wears a padded jacket above his shorts. He is walking through the long corridors to snow photographer Michiel Bles his room. In a niche in the wall a statue of Saint Lidwina stands with a cross in her arms. The wood has bare spots and she looks sour. A little later they pass the shared showers.
The Lidwina Monastery in Tilburg, The Netherlands, built on behalf of the Sisters of Charity, dates from the thirties. The nuns started a Montessori school and a boarding house for the elderly. Since the beginning of this century there are migrant workers living here.
It was a surprise for photographer Bles that the monastery has – next to the 75 residents from Eastern Europe – also houses 45 migrants from Spain and Portugal. Most work in distribution centers in the area, via an employment agency that pays the rent of 500 euros per month, withheld from their wages. Bles decided to make a report about them.
Iván Guerra Arroyo is an engineer, specialized in telecommunications and renewable energy. He comes from the South of Spain, city of Sevilla, but he could not find a job there. “There is a surplus of engineers and it pays poorly. Only after the age of 45 you can live off the salary.” He shares his room in the monastery with a compatriot, like all singles men in the building. The room has two single beds, a refrigerator with freezer and a TV. Gas, water, electricity and internet are included. There is a shared kitchen.
Oscar Pérez (26) studied human resources at the University of Cádiz, a city with high unemployment rates. He shares the monastery room with his girlfriend. Alvaro Gaspar (52) lives with his wife. He is born in Colombia and lived in Madrid for 24 years, until he could no longer find work. “If even young people cannot find jobs, I have no chance at all.” He has been in the Netherlands for six years and has lived in “countless” many places in the country. Now he lives within walking distance of one of his daughters, and his grandchildren aged 1 and 5 years. His other daughter still lives in Spain.
Walid Aguili Aguili (24) from Murcia came to the Netherlands with three friends. “When it comes to work for young people, this is the perfect place.” Although he might want to do something other than warehouse work, after a year and a half, such as sales. He speaks English, Spanish and Arabic. He calls the monastery the most beautiful place where he has lived until now.
Iván Guerra Arroyo wants nothing more than studying in the Netherlands in order to become an engineer. In his spare time, he learns English and Dutch through online courses. He’s dating a girl from the small town of Deurne, he says. The place he used to live. She is half-Dutch and half-Brazilian. “My future is here.”
Client: NRC
Media: Photography
My role: Idea and photography
Languages: Dutch
Watch the photo series on NRC’s website
Project info: Photo reportage of anti Israel protest at the Dutch Radboud University for news paper NRC
Client: NRC
Media: Photography
My role: Photography
Languages: Dutch
Watch the photo reportage on NRC’s website
Watch the longreads on migrant workers
Project info: Photo reportage of the vert halfpipe contest October 28, 2023 at World Skate Center Den Bosch
Client: Autonomous
Media: Photography
Project info: ‘De Bandbus’. For the Dutch news paper NRC, we jump in tour buses, used by music bands and artists. Together with music journalist Leendert van der Valk we tell the on-the-road stories of endless hours behind the wheel, the conversations, the accidents, the silly jokes and terrorising farts.
Client: NRC
Media: Photography
My role: Idea and photography
Languages: Dutch
Watch the various episodes of ‘De bandbus’ on NRC.nl
An interview on Dutch radio 2 about the Bandbus series (in Dutch)
Project info: As water levels rise in Dutch rivers, I made a visual report of a Dutch couple living in the floodplains of the Waal river. .
Client: Autonomous
Media: Photography
My role: Idea and photography
Languages: Dutch
Project info: Hundreds of thousands Palestinian refugees live in refugee camps in South Lebanon. Ein el Helweh, Rashidieh and El Buss have been the makeshift home of generations of Palestinians who have fled the violence in Gaza and the West Bank. In 2010 and 2012 I visited the camps in Lebanon to document the lives of children living in these dire conditions.
Together with founder of the Dutch NGO War Child Holland and its goodwill ambassador Marco Borsato I interviewed and portrayed children and their parents. The pictures, reportages, background stories and video reports have been and are still used in War Child’s printed media, website, social media and advocacy reports.
Client: War Child
Media: Photography
Languages: –
Project info: Five brave, aspiring photojournalists from Latin America face major challenges expressing their opinions. Prejudice, intimidation, violence, it’s part of their daily job in Mexico, Venezuela and El Salvador. This long scroll honours these young professional photographers and video reporters.
Client: RNW Media
Media: Photography, webdesign
Project info: When the heat of the day leaves town and the sun gets low, men gather at the washing bay in Gulu. At this roadside carwash against a tropical backdrop, cars, trucks and motor bikes get their daily clean-up.
Client: Autonomous
Media: Photography
Languages: –
Indulgence by Michiel Bles
Project info: In times of work pressure, stress and our newly acquired need to be in touch 24/7, room and time for indulgence are diminishing. This photo series explores situations and persons who take time for enjoyment. Forget about time, being idle.
Exercising, as French revolutionary Marxist socialist journalist, political writer and activist Paul Lafargue stated, the right the right to be lazy. These progressively scarce moments are captured in this ongoing photo project.
Client: Autonomous
Media: Photography
Languages: –
Project info: No less that 80 times Amsterdam ferrymen and women go up and down the IJ canal each shift. Each day, each week. 80 times the same 5 minute passage. 40 times a view on the same quay.
A few meters above the passenger deck, they look down on the cargo disembarking their vessel. A couple of minutes when docked allow for a moment of woolgathering.
When the buzzer sounds, the mesmerizing is over and a new crossing is about to begin.
Is this the most peaceful or the most dreary job in the world? ‘Musing on the ferry’ is a visual quest for the answer to this question.
Client: Autonomous
Media: Photography
Languages: –
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