Photography has captivated me since my childhood in the northern Dutch countryside (Drenthe, NL). My first pictures focused on the people around me, taking photos of daily life around the farm. During my Bachelor studies at the Academia Minerva (Groningen, NL), I became interested in photographing events in Eastern Europe. One of my first stories was related to flooding in a small town in Romania. After graduating as a documentary photographer, I immediately started my own business as a freelance photographer. My interests in Eastern Europe grew more and more, and I travelled several times to Ukraine and Bulgaria. During those early years in my career as a photographer, I was mostly interested in showing facts through series photography. Recently, my work has developed in a more conceptual way, and I am busy finding ways to tell stories of single people by focusing on details rather than events.
Maarten de Kok.
Photo: Corné Sparidaens