In Conversation with... David van Dartel
Billiew en Paduey III, 2022 by David van Dartel
A few weeks after his exhibition opening earlier this year, we sat down with David van Dartel and discussed his second series, What Once Was, his inspiration behind it, his collaboration with Dutch poet, Roelof ten Napel and his favourite pieces from the new series.
Reflecting on his career so far and his relationship with Elliott Gallery, he says:
“When I first met Addie, I didn’t know what a portfolio was. I didn’t have any background in photography, apart from having it as my hobby. She curated my first series from ten years of random shots.
For my second series, I had more confidence, more knowledge about how I wanted to make the series as a body of work and not just single shots that I liked. If I look back on it, I'm quite happy how much I learned from Addie on how you curate a show or how you really create a consistent body of work of all those images you make. It really gave me the confidence to be a photographer.”
1. With your first exhibition happening during Covid, how did it feel to be open to the public this time, with such a great turnout as well?
“The first exhibition opened in the week the first lockdown began, in 2020. Although it was quite nice to welcome people in the gallery and have a one-on-one meeting, it was also quite sad we didn't have an opening party. The exhibition that followed and the book all took place during lockdown.
For my second solo exhibition at Elliott Gallery earlier this year, it was quite overwhelming and fun to see three hundred or more people turning up and the whole gallery being packed. They all came to see the new series and I have to say, it was very nice to celebrate it with family, friends, and people who like the work, but it was also quite overwhelming.”
Alessio en Filippo, 2022 by David van Dartel
2. What is the concept behind your new series and book, What Once Was, and how does it compare and contrast to your first series, Op Vlieland?
“In my first series, themes like friendship and masculinity were things that people could identify with. Such themes weren’t included in the series on purpose, because I had the idea to create something around them. It was something that happened really organically. It felt natural for us as a group of friends, we are like that, and that was reflected in the series. When I was thinking about creating a new series, I really wanted to do something around masculinity and friendship again, because I felt there was still a lot to explore.
One thing I found quite difficult is that because I only photograph young men, it’s something you get identified quite quick with, but I wanted to elaborate more on what is exactly my style. For that, I wanted to explore more natural surroundings. So, without people, is it still something close to my style or is my style really attached to those young men?
I think for this series it worked quite well to photograph and focus more on nature in combination with portraits. This combination is something that I'm really happy to explore further. Also, focusing on nature showed me that I'm also capable of keeping the work personal and close to me, even when there are not people involved.”
Romeo, 2022 by David van Dartel
Kaïs, 2022 by David van Dartel
Bloemen in de schemering, 2022 by David van Dartel
Billiew en Paduey IV, 2022 by David van Dartel
3. For What Once Was, you travelled around Europe. Could you share your favourite experience?
“We started in Scotland, one of my favorite places to photograph. It’s also a really hard place to photograph, since the weather is very unpredictable. When we got there in June, it was midge season, which is a very annoying kind of mosquito and there are millions of them. I was there, we scouted the location and it was all sunny, but at the day we had to photograph it was pouring with rain and there were so many midges, that it was almost not possible to shoot.
Those are things you don't expect and can really work against you, but you have to make something out of it. In this case, it turned out quite nice because there are raindrops on the photos, which I really like but the shoot itself was quite hard work, especially for the models. I remember being in the car, Sil was driving, the two guys were in the back, and then something happened with the gear. The car started smoking and all three of us started running out of the car! Everything was problematic that day and, in the end, I was quite disappointed. When I was back in Amsterdam though, I gathered and edited everything and realised it had actually turned out quite nicely”.
4. Can you tell us about your new book and the poetry you chose to include?
“When I started working on the new series, I read Roelof ten Napel’s work for the first time and it made me feel something that I also want to translate in my work. So, I thought it would be quite interesting to combine his work with mine and I asked him to write 15 new essays and poems for the book. The nice thing about our collaboration was that he hadn’t seen a lot of the new work, so, he didn’t write them specifically about my photos, but about certain topics we discussed.
What I really like about the poetry is that it reflects the feeling of the images without actually talking about the images. There are also separate pages with only poems that don’t relate to any photo, but really contribute to the feeling of the book, which I think is very nice”.
Étretat, 2022 by David van Dartel
5. What's your personal favourite piece from the series and why?
“I have a few. For ‘Sil in Malaga’ we travelled to Malaga in Spain. We were driving around, and it was a really cloudy day, but I had seen this tree all the way up the mountains. This tree was coming back all the time. Anywhere we were driving, from every way, you could see this tree. So, in the end, I really wanted to go to there and as soon as we arrived, the weather got worse. It was really bad, we were waiting for half an hour to get some sunlight. So, I put Sil against the tree with his hand like this and I thought to myself ‘let's see if it's gonna work.’ And it did!
Another one is ‘Billew and Paduey I’. Whenever I find a location - in this case it was Scotland - I do research on Google Maps. There, I place myself on street view and look at all the pictures other people upload, so I can actually place myself in those pictures. This is one frame I saw of someone who was there 5 or 6 years ago, and I instantly liked the composition and the whole scenery. Then, when I was there I kind of recreated the composition with the boys. I placed them right in the centre, and it turned out exactly like I planned for months, so that was quite nice.
Finally, when I got ‘Sil met een Krekel’ digitally, it wasn't as striking as when I saw it for the first time in the gallery framed, on the wall. Working both on an exhibition and a book at the same time, made me realise all those different ways to showcase your work and how some things I am not sure about, turn out different in the end!”
Sil met een krekel, 2022 by David van Dartel
Sil in Malaga, 2022 by David van Dartel
Billiew en Paduey I, 2022 by David van Dartel
Interview by Miranda Tate / Edited by Eirini Alexandrou