TACO ANEMA - photographer

Taco Anema – Photographer

Taco Anema is a Dutch photographer who in 2009 had a great exhibition at Hous Museum Marseilles on Dutch households. His collection was 100 families and he’d been working on it since 2002. His portraits of families are not the formal ones such as those of well-known German photographer Thomas Struth. Rather they are informal scenes. While the rooms are not earthy and untidy, he still manages to portray a warmth in the family. Each member is ‘doing their own thing’ and not looking at the camera.

Taco Anema studied sociology in Amsterdam then changed to photography – a great background to documentary photography which he has been doing since 1975. His photos often documented his political stance and used his photographs as an instrument of activism.

Toco Anema straightens her photos or they are taken so the verticals are perpendicular to the ground. I have a tendency to always straighten my shots. I was planning in this exercise to not necessarily straighten this verticals so photos may be taken from higher or lower to the subjects. If I can resist the urge to straighten them - well it depends what they look like, it might work well. I intend to use a wide angle lens and I plan to accept a little distortion a bit like Ron Nicolayson does. I'm not quite sure what I will do with lighting yet - I would like to use available light but I don't think it will be enough .

Below is an example of well renouned German family portrait photographer Thomas Struth. Whereas Struth sets is families up in a formal way, Anema has a much more casual approach which I find much more appealing.

Reference:

http://www.huismarseille.nl/en/collection/photographer/taco-anema

http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.com/2009/03/dutch-households-by-taco-anema.html