Looking through the glass When talking about her work Risk Hazekamp tells almost immediately about the reactions on her work. She is amazed that most people just believe their eyes and think whatever they see is true. Even when the backdrop is pleaded, even when the lighting is incredibly artificial many think the photographs were made in the United States. That is not true. Hazekamp took them in Rotterdam. She is the model in front of a projected background, a bit like the nineteenth century portrait. The representation she is after is not that of decorum but of fantasy. When she was fifteen she was travelling with her parents through America and she made a photograph of the Rocky Mountains. She still uses this for projection. She does not feel the need to go back, suffice that she saw it. Moreover she is afraid that the effect would be far too dramatic if she would photograph herself in the American landscape. Hazekamp is interested in a world of fantasy, a world inhabited by heroes. Film posters representing an ideal world. In her work Hazekamp investigates how heroes are being depicted, her work is a flirt and a wink to that world. She does not see her photographs as selfportraits but as composed images, pictures that lead an own life. A life that looks like ours but is not. . . . I'll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room you can see through the glass - that's just the same as our drawing-room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair - all but the bit just behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see t h a t bit! I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never c a n tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too - but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. She talks about the making of the photographs, she tells about the way they come about and her fascination for technical aspects. In her Rotterdam studio she experiments with projections and lighting. Here she can try out a gesture or the raising of her eyes. She needs to be alone, nobody should see how she is working on that striking pose. Slowly the image that she has in her mind comes about. Only when that has been achieved others may see the result of this search. A fantasy world that looks like ours but is not. Then she tells she has worked on location in Spain, looking for the right spot for days. Taking an identical pose in different landscape over and over again, each time also in a different light. This repetition makes that she looses her preoccupation with the way she looks so she can fully concentrate on technical aspects. At the same time she is no longer aware of the things happening around her and thus the perfect photograph emerges. These are the best moments when photographing. The Spanish landscape attracts her because westerns were made there in lieu of America. She likes the artificiality of this construction. The photographs that she made over there are as unrealistic as the ones from her studio. She says that reality kills the dream. A dream is attractive because everyone can project his own thoughts and ideas in it. Disconsolate landscapes are particularly attractive finds Hazekamp. Those sites are not be the subject for a photograph but can lead to a scene. Material for an image. In her photographs the cowboy is the inhabitant of that landscape and plays the lead. For her the cowboy is the ultimate cliché. In film making the Western has the strictest rules. One man with a white hat and the other with a black hat. Acting according to a strict pattern. She likes the fact that everything is predictable and you know what is happening. When I ask her what she likes about this affirmation, she answers that it is nicer to know what is going to happen. It is not boring, it is stimulating. She smiles and says it is always wonderful to know it is going to be alright. The cowboy always gets the prettiest girl, he safes the village and goes, alone. Everyone remembers him fondly and can idealize the hero in his own way. The series of bullfighters made in Southern Spain and Portugal looks like a major break with the staged studio photographs. Here vulnerability opposes idealization. Men are smeared with blood and have torn clothes. The video Hazekamp made of the fighters in waiting is equally telling in its registration of nervous gestures and stares. How can you be cool when you are shitting in your pants? Gone is the Hollywood idol, here is reality about to become gruesome. The boys are lined up, wearing the same suits. In their fright they are endearing. One time they too will be hero, now fear is in their eyes. It is remarkable that bullfighters use things mostly associated with women. Embroidered jackets, pink stockings, ballet shoes and a funny hat. In fact he is back in the role nature has given the male species, the seducer with the bright colors, the longest feathers or the biggest antlers. Idiotic display of power. Just like the cowboys from Hollywood. I'm sure it's got, oh! such beautiful things in it! Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow . . . Hazekamp is like Alice in Wonderland. She visits a world that looks like ours. A world where everything has its own pattern, where everything ends well. But she is also like Lewis Carroll, the writer that shows us another world, a miraculous place where you have to believe what you see. And if you finally understand that what you see is not what you think it is, you may see in it what you want. Piet de Jonge, November 2001 2001 - Director Modern Art / Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam 2003 - Head of Collections and Displays Museum Kröller-Müller Otterlo Quotations from: Through the looking glass and what Alice found there, chapter 1 back