INTRODUCING MARNIX VAN UUM
I’m from The Hague, in The Netherlands and I think it’s a lovely city with a village kind of feeling to it. There’s not much to do here though except for hanging out with friends and maybe go to a party now and then. I’m twenty years old and I started taking photography more seriously when I was around seventeen, when one of my best friends introduced me to film photography. Luckily for me, my mom had an old Minolta XG 1 somewhere hidden in a closet, so I could start right away. I was hooked immediately, because it felt good creating something out of ‘reality’. I have some great memories of me and my friend wondering around The Hague looking for something to photograph. I want to make a living from photography, that’s my main goal. A particular goal would be an exhibition at the MoMA, New York. That would be awesome. I think my life would be boring and pretty much useless without photography, since I’m not very good at most things. Thanks to photography I’ve met some great people and I became aware of the good friends and girlfriend I have, since I document most of the things we do together. It’s always a pleasure to look through my archive and see some funny and awkward moments we’ve encountered. Because of photography I was published in a book that was published by a publisher that I love. That’s a lot of ‘publish’ in one sentence. I love my Rollei Compactline 350! It just makes me giggle when I’m taking photographs with it. I wouldn’t say that the above is my favourite photograph, but what I love about this one is that some things aren’t controllable. When I came home after shooting this, I was already pleased with the outcome, but after staring at it for a while I noticed that the left shoe of the subject was covered in dog shit (sorry, I love to exaggerate). This unpredicted detail gave the photograph much more meaning, so I was happy with the never to be traced dog. A photographer that I admire would be Paul Kooiker. He’s really good at creating atmospheres that can be both provocating and aphrodisiac. He creates realities out of something that isn’t real or didn’t really occur.
