Juul Hondius
They never look you in the eye, the protagonists in Juul Hondius’ (1970, Ens) photos. They stare, they gaze, their motionless glance focused on something that escapes you. Hondius’ models are conscious fellow players in a game that the photographer is playing with them. His photos are not about the people in the image. Hondius enquires of the beholder not what or whom the photo is portraying, but how the beholder takes it in. Both his theoretical approach to photography as a medium and his preoccupation with the viewer’s moment of realisation with regard to the image practically force Hondius the photographer to disappear from the photo that he has so carefully staged.