“I want to show a world in which we acknowledge that everything and everyone is connected to each other. I believe we should emphasise the connection to nature more.”
- David van Dartel
David van Dartel (b. 1995) is a Dutch Photographer, who has gained a significant international following for his work. He is an extremely talented and self-taught Artist, launching his career at Elliott Gallery, in 2019. Since then, his work has attracted worldwide attention and is already in key-private collections around the world, including the USA, Canada, Spain, Israel, Australia, Switzerland and many more, as well as various publications including Die Zeit, De Volkskrant, Het Financieele Dagblad, De NRC, Harper's Bazaar, iD-Magazine, De Groene Amsterdammer.
David grew up in the Dutch countryside, in a small village in Overijssel, where he started experimenting with self-portraiture in the fields and forests around him, while nurturing his fascination for landscape photography. This love of portrait and landscape photography naturally evolved and has resulted in him combining people and landscapes within his images, creating gentle, but also, often by contrast, dramatically atmospheric and striking photographs.
Van Dartel’s first series ‘Op Vlieland’ is an astonishing body of work taken on the rugged West Frisian Island in the Dutch Wadden Sea that celebrates those near to him – his closest friends. Having visited Vlieland since childhood, van Dartel has a deep affinity with the Island, clearly reflected in his body of work.
“The ‘Op Vlieland’ series represents ‘My Vlieland’. The physicality of the island provides me the opportunity for an ideal image, the imaginary island. It resonates with my ideal, the culmination of where and who I want to be.” - David van Dartel
Following the immense success of his inaugural solo exhibition and the ‘Op Vlieland’ series, van Dartel announced his first book, This Time Tomorrow, published by MENDO in 2020.
In van Dartel’s second series, ‘What Once Was’, he once again delves into the portrayal of friendship and masculinity, creating a vivid portrait of young adults in several European countries, carefully stylised, but still very close to his sense of friendship. The series raises questions about the classical discourse of masculinity.
“One should have the freedom to give their own meaning to those connections, however, stereotypes limit this freedom. With ‘What Once Was’ I want to show that masculinity eventually is all about humanity, and that humanity is always associated with a vulnerability and dependency to nature” - David van Dartel
The series is launched together with his second book, ‘What Once Was’, with Dutch poet Roelof ten Napel, writing short essays and fragments to accompany the photographs.
