Haute Photography was founded in Rotterdam now more than 10 years ago. In the first editions they were guests in the building next to the PhotoMuseum, now they have their own venue in the Keile area.
This is a thriving location where you will find more art than you would expect. In the Katoenhuis you can view contemporary dance. A bit further in an impressive industrial complex you will find Brutus. Here, artists are given the space to develop and showcase large-scale and experimental work. Expect monumental installations, performances, and exhibitions outside the traditional museum framework.
And now back to photography & Haute Photographie.
Located in Rotterdam’s vibrant M4H district, Keilepand will transform into a 1,250 m² pop-up museum for the 11th Haute Photographie Rotterdam fair. This boutique art fair, designed like a museum, is fully dedicated to fine art photography. With more than 60 established photographers and on top of that, a of new talent Haute is worth a visit.
MICHEL HADDI France, 1956
Michel Haddi is an internationally acclaimed photographer and director, celebrated for his powerful visual storytelling and unmistakable style. For more than three decades, he has shaped the world of fashion and portrait photography, capturing the spirit of film, celebrity, and culture with striking intensity and elegance.
Born in Paris and now based in London, Haddi built his career across the major fashion capitals, London, Paris, Milan, New York, and Los Angeles, where he collaborated with leading magazines, fashion houses, and creative visionaries. His lens has framed some of the most iconic figures of our time. What distinguishes Haddi’s work is his cinematic approach to portraiture. Beyond glamour, he seeks intimacy and truth, revealing the personalities behind the fame. His black-and-white images, in particular, carry a timeless quality, bold, raw, and infused with an atmosphere reminiscent of classic film. Each portrait feels both immediate and eternal, existing at the intersection of fashion, art, and storytelling.
SCHILTE & PORTIELJE The Netherlands, 1953+1958
Huub Schilte and Jacqueline Portielje are a Rotterdam-based artist duo who have been exploring the creative potential of the computer as an artistic medium since 1997. For them, the computer is at once a photographic darkroom and a painter’s brush, a space where drawing, photography, and digital manipulation merge seamlessly.
Schilte & Portielje work intuitively, without a fixed plan or pre-determined subject. From an archive of self-created image fragments, photographs, textures, and drawn elements, they construct a universe that is entirely their own. Their black-and-white compositions reveal figures that are at once intimate and enigmatic, often suspended between grace and discomfort. Subtle eroticism, sculptural poses, and the quiet poetry of desire are recurring motifs, lending their work a haunting intensity.
LUKE WOODFORD United Kingdom, 1985
Luke Woodford is a British fine art photographer and publisher whose work has been exhibited and published across the world. Based in the United Kingdom, he resists artistic categorisation, allowing his personal journey to shape the evolving forms of his visual language. Independent in spirit and unapologetically outspoken, Woodford consistently challenges convention, both creatively and personally.
Following a period of profound personal loss and transformation, Woodford turned the camera inward, producing deeply symbolic self-portraiture before returning to the female form with renewed conviction. This creative rebirth gave rise to his Resurrection series, an exploration of renewal, vulnerability, and strength, which now defines the current chapter of his artistic practice.
STEFAN GRÖPPER Germany, 1971
Stefan Gröpper is a photographer whose work transcends simple depiction to become an echo, an impression, and a lasting encounter. Known for his mastery of monochromatic depth, Gröpper’s images are carefully composed dialogues of light and shadow, clarity and emotion. His gaze captures the essential, faces, bodies, gestures, and spaces, where sculptural light threads through his visual storytelling.
Inspired by masters like Penn, Avedon, and Lindbergh, Gröpper follows his own rigorous yet poetic path. He seeks a silent, unspoken connection with his subjects, creating photographs that resonate with emotional truth, often revealing beauty within imperfections. Photography, for Gröpper, is a medium serving expression and resonance, never loud but always precise.
MARTA MARGRÉT Iceland, 1982
Marta Margrét is an Icelandic fine-art photographer based in Brussels. Her work explores perception, abstraction, and the subtle ways absence shapes how form and space are experienced. Working primarily with architectural structures and minimal compositions, she develops photographic series that examine rhythm, repetition, and partial views as perceptual conditions rather than descriptive subjects.
Shaped by her upbringing amid Iceland’s elemental landscapes, waterfalls, glaciers, lakes, and the sea her practice reflects a way of seeing shaped by natural rhythms and carried across geographic and cultural contexts. Through abstraction, hard materials give rise to soft visual movements, where memory, projection, and longing quietly surface. Her work has received international photography awards and has been featured in European publications.
DEANA NASTIC Canada, 1964
Deana Nastic’s work radiates sensuality and poetic depth. Born in Serbia, and now based in Toronto, Canada, Nastic first forged her artistic foundation in fine arts, studying at the University of Belgrade and mastering painting and watercolours before discovering photography in 2012.
Her early career in fine art deeply informs her photographic vision, as she embraced the camera as a new “painting tool,” allowing her to extend the fluidity and expressive nuance of her watercolour practice into the photographic medium. What might appear as chance “happy accidents” in her imagery is, in fact, the result of a finely attuned artistic instinct that captures luminous, painterly effects and haunting atmospheres.
Nastic’s work consistently explores the feminine mystique through a lyrical interplay of light and shadow. Her photographs capture a spectrum of emotion and psychological depth, offering hauntingly beautiful reflections on the human condition.
MIKE STEEGMANS Belgium, 1972
Mike Steegmans is a Belgian photographer with over 25 years of professional experience. He built an extensive commercial career working with international magazines and brands across action sports, portraiture, travel, and fashion. In 2004, a major Belgian magazine commission marked his entry into model and fashion photography.
In recent years, his focus has moved toward personal art projects, particularly underwater and sea- related work, where unpredictability and collaboration with natural forces are essential. His exhibitions include PHO/TO (2010), El Baile de la Mar (2024), and Curandera (2025), recently reflecting a deep respect for the ocean’s beauty, power, and healing presence. Mike Steegmans is based between Antwerp and Catalonia, Spain.
NINA HAUBEN The Netherlands , 1996
Nina Hauben is an artist based in Amsterdam. Her work serves as a visual translation of experiences and emotions. Instead of relying on (un)spoken words, she transforms her innermost thoughts and feelings into a visual language, an endless voyage reflective space to return to, with each series revealing subtle shifts in perspective over time.
In Phase 1, titled “WITH(OUT),” Hauben delves into the nature of memory. “In the end, all that’s left are the memories we hold. It’s a fear that these memories, like wisps of smoke, will dissipate with time, leaving me with a void that cannot be filled. I wish I could have collected more of these memories. Since I can’t hear your voice, your footsteps, or feel your presence, I have to pretend, so that’s what I do.”
In Phase 2, “Silent Dialogue,” Hauben marks a gradual shift from stillness to life. This phase blurs the lines between reality and memory, presence and absence. Through this phase, viewers are invited to reflect on memories and the spaces they leave behind.
ESTHER VAN DER WALLEN The Netherlands, 1964
Esther van der Wallen is a Dutch photographer whose work celebrates beauty, presence, and the courage to be oneself. She creates images that honour authenticity and the human spirit, with particular fascination for the female form and emotional openness. Through her photography, Esther seeks to reveal moments of vulnerability and strength, capturing people in ways that allow their truest selves to emerge. Her approach to portraiture is grounded in genuine connection: during sessions she fosters open conversation and trust, encouraging her subjects to relax beyond self-consciousness. These interactions often lead to unguarded expressions of joy, introspection, or quiet confidence, moments that Esther believes enrich both the work and the viewer’s experience.
Esther works both in studio and on the streets, combining her love of light, architecture, and natural surroundings with an intuitive eye for composition. Her influences range from street photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Miroslav Tichý to surrealist artists, reflecting a blend of spontaneity and thoughtful framing in her work.
Venue
Keilestraat 9f, 3029 BP Rotterdam, The Netherlands
27 March: 12:00 – 19:00
28-29 March: 10:00 – 19:00
https://www.haute-photographie.com/tickets2026
https://www.haute-photographie.com/
John Devos
johndevos.photo(a)gmail.com
