Two moments of my life, two states of mind, one subject: the urban fringe. A form of marginality

looked for and found on the outskirts of Amsterdam, witnessing the expansion of the urban borders at the expense of nature which itself adjusted or rearised spontaneously in places still unclaimed by the voracity of the city.

First of all, during the time of my double professional unemployment, I focused on the objects of the urban fringe. I concentrated all my creative will on them, while at the same time trying to develop my own language. Those were the black-and-white images presented with the photographic manifesto during my first exhibitions in simple makeshift galleries.

Later on I found the marginality elswhere: the workers scraping old ships by the riverside, or the old abandoned railways which I followed along kilometers even trespassing the national borders. Then, the outskirts of some Morrocan and Indian cities. I began widening my scope to broad peri-urban landscapes, at first in tradicional black-and-white, later in color. Finally, I came back to Amsterdamand walked along its borders.

Between that original black-and-white and these colour images some 30 years have elapsed. Now I have brought them together as a kind of homage to the fringe and to those beings which swarm around in its almost deserted spaces.