Ton Hendriks

I studied philosophy at the university in Amsterdam and specialized comparative studies in Western and Eastern culture. After being graduated I decided to become a photographer, because seeing the world was more interesting than reading about theories.

I focused myself on documentary photography. After some years I found out that I wanted to control the image more, and understood that I could better make portraits. Since then I work for different magazines, national and international, companies, advertorial campaigns, making portraits in all editorial fields. In my editorial work I focus on power, beauty, sincerity and story of the photo.

On my own behalf I make documentary projects concerning social issues. As such I made a series of homeless youth, a series of gypsies, a series of migrants. Also I did a project on Tibetan refugees in India, a series about the ethnic population of Suriname. In Bolivia I did a project about an isolated Indian village, in Mongolia I did a project about ex nomads. In Ghana I did the project African Village.

I did a long project about street children world wide, called Global Street Child, visiting 10 countries all over the world. This project had been published in a book: Global Street Child, by Lecturis, Holland.

In Amsterdam I did the project Faces of Amsterdam, about the sociology of the inhabitants of the Dutch capital. Recently I finished a portrait project about interracial adopted people in Holland, Coloured Identity. I am working on a project about refugees, called Vluchthaven. I do a project Dutch Mona Lisa, about the changes in Holland regarding immigration.

For me portraiture is a way to describe a human being on different levels of information, from his social background to his emotional state. The expression of the sitter is the most important, but all other photographic means are my big concern. My central theme is the relation of the individual to the social environment, the way in which the person as such creates and lives his own karma. In all my work I am interested how the individual survives his own environment. Behind this you find my preoccupation with social, economical and moral injustice.In the meantime I wrote a book about photography, for academies, from the point of view of how to create meaningful images, in Dutch, title Beeldspraak (Images Speak) 

I teach photography at De Fotovakschool in Amsterdam. I am the chief editor of the photo magazine PF. And I give lectures all over Holland about analysis of photography and photography and identity.