Stepping into an abandoned house, you open the doors carefully and wander from room to room. The wallpaper is peeling, the bed unmade, the paperwork is still on the table, the sewing machine reminds you of a long vanished seamstress. Like in the world of Sleeping Beauty, everything seems to have been slumbering for a hundred years. Inside it is dusk, and through the windows the outside light shines in. Softly it touches the dust-laden items as if to kiss them awake.
Wondering about someone’s story, someone you never knew, entering a life’s history. Outside, life hurries on — inside it’s quiet. For a while you are lifted from your own reality, you’re an eyewitness to a time that has passed.

In watching, there’s only the moment. You are both an outsider and a participant. As an outsider, you’re curious, you explore and question. As you become a participant, you get connected with the things you that you’ve seen. You gain a new apprehension of the past, and all things acquire an innovative, transcendent meaning.

Ineke Kamps — photographer, painter and illustrator, shoots abandoned interiors. In deft and concise patterns, in sober colours and straightforward compositions — without staging, she bears witness to a reality that exists outside of the ordinary, but is still genuine. The natural light grants the scenes a timelessness, reminiscent of paintings by the old Dutch masters. It intensifies — with great subtlety — the silence and the juxtaposition between the world inside and the one outside, like a contrast between life and death, between motion and solidified time. Every now and then the light hardens the contours, and gives the images a mysterious and painterly drama. Colour and light, shape and composition, structure and texture provide the photos with a nearly classical, ethical beauty. It’s a beauty that makes you wonder — and at the same time reconciles you to a unique, often perplexing, truth.

The intimacy of the scenes demands the dedicated attention of the viewer. Carefully, with the knowledge of quirky possibilities, one steps into the haunting scene,  marvels, and is touched by the beauty of the transitory – and by the realization that the story of the passing time is also one’s own.

(Janet Meester)

I studied painting and drawing at art school. After completing my studies, at first I focused exclusively on painting.
More recently I have dug into photography, both digital and analog, and I have started to exhibit my photos. In 2013 I was selected as one of the New Dutch Photography talents. I’m a vegetarian and supporter of animal rights organisations. I also deploy myself as a photographer for, among others, Four Paws. I live and work in Sittard.
If you’re interested in purchasing a photo, please send me a message for a non-committal quotation.