I am a Dutch filmmaker photographer, based in both The Netherlands and Japan.
I was born in the Summer of 1962 in the Dutch port town of Vlaardingen, near Rotterdam. During my early formative years from 1973 to 1980, I used black and white 120 roll film on pre-war box cameras passed down by my grandparents. I captured daily life in my hometown, along with some early experimental work, all presented in a square format.
From 1981 to 2009, I focused on street, landscape, travel, abandoned places, and portrait photography, primarily using Kodachrome slide film. Beginning in 2000, I also documented the evolving cityscapes of Breda and Amsterdam, as well as the Belgian town of Doel. This period resulted in a vast body of work, including thousands of slides and tens of thousands of digital images, and coincided with my expansion into filmmaking. My documentary, 'Once Upon Amsterdam,' captures the city's transformation during the construction of the Noord-Zuidlijn—the new subway line connecting the northern and southern parts of the city—in 2005, and it enjoyed a successful run at film festivals.
Starting in 2009, when Kodak ceased production of Kodachrome slide films, I began to focus on experimental and conceptual photography. In 2018, I marked a return to my roots by exclusively taking black and white photos again, with a 1:1 aspect ratio, reminiscent of how I began my journey in 1973. But now, I emphasize abstraction, pushing it to the edge where it begins to alienate the viewer from the subject. This approach allows new meanings and interpretations to emerge from the image.
The experimental work 'Re/cycle' was part of 'Deus Ex Terra - Visions beyond the deception of wealth', a group exhibition at the CON-TEMPORARY Art Observatorium, Lavagna Italy, in December 2019.
"Je sentais que je n'étais pas une partie du monde, mais plutôt un spectateur." — Albert Camus, L'Étranger (1942)
"I felt that I was not a part of the world, but rather a spectator of it." — Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942)
René Jean Smaal
Email: rene@runleveltwo.com
WWW: www.runleveltwo.com
IMDb: www.imdb.com/name/nm10773354