Joep Hijwegen (1994, The Netherlands) is a self-taught photographer who was born in a rural area and moved to the city 5 years ago to study philosophy. He started taking photographs only two years ago, born out of a position of anxiety and fear of loss. To Hijwegen, photography is about creating meaning, turning life into something personally constructed rather than passively observed. While shot candidly and spontaneously, his images do not seek to document that which is on the other side of the lens. They are crafted to reflect things he longs for, things he fears and things that bring him comfort. His works exude nostalgia, love, mystery and terror, things that we usually seek in cinema or recreations of reality, but that can also be found in the everyday through directed observance.
