Foam Magazine #21 / MERGE / Nickel van Duijvenboden

Nickel van Duijvenboden was born in 1981 in Amsterdam. He was educated as a photographer, but turned to writing after his studies. As a student he was preoccupied with questions of the nature of photography that could not be answered by photography alone.

 His first collection of essays, The Grand Absence, was published in 2003. The title essay examines in the form of a dialogue the extent to which words can replace images: a photography graduate receives a phone call from his father and tries to help him visualize the images in his exhibition. Can a visualization undo his father’s absence? Can mental images replace physical ones? In reality, it was the images themselves that were absent. Nickel van Duijvenboden earned his degree in photography by reading The Grand Absence in an empty exhibition space.

He continued writing about photography and visual art without venturing too explicitly into the bordering fields of theory, criticism or literature. He gradually developed an autonomous working method and positioned himself as a visual artist working with text.

 Using fiction as a visualization, and an evocation, his texts reflect on images and engage in complex relations with them. Photography and visual perception remain important motives in his work, as in, for example his novella Plateau, published in 2008. Two scientists stationed on the Arctic drift ice are researching the polar landscape. They gradually realize that their relationship towards nature is entirely mediated by mechanical and analog representation. The scientific dogma of objectivity makes it virtually impossible to make sense of their presence on a personal level. A turn of events forces them to acknowledge that subjectivity cannot be shut out: in fact, it is indispensable. For information on the availability of publications by Nickel van Duijvenboden, please visit www.nickelvd.nl.