Hendrik & Paula Kerstens

Hendrik Kerstens (b. 1956, The Hague) is a Dutch photographer whose work explores portraiture, identity, family, and the relationship between historical imagery and contemporary life. Without formal artistic training, Kerstens began his career in business before deciding, at the age of forty, to devote himself to photography. In 1995, he left the corporate world and became the primary caregiver for his daughter Paula Kerstens (b. 1987, The Hague), while developing his photographic practice. Their relationship became the starting point for an ongoing body of work that has evolved over several decades.

Kerstens initially photographed Paula as part of everyday family life, documenting her growth and the changing relationship between father and daughter. These early images developed from an intimate interest in parenthood and the feelings of responsibility, vulnerability, and affection that accompany it. As Paula grew older, Kerstens gradually moved away from documentary photography towards a more constructed visual language, using portraiture to explore broader questions of identity, representation, and the act of looking.

A central point of reference within his work is seventeenth-century Dutch portrait painting. Drawing on the restrained compositions, lighting, and psychological presence associated with the Old Masters, Kerstens creates portraits that appear historical at first glance but are firmly rooted in the present. Everyday materials such as plastic bags, aluminium foil, paper, towels, and textiles are transformed into elaborate headdresses, collars, and garments. By placing these ordinary and often disposable materials within carefully composed portraits, the works create a dialogue between historical imagery and contemporary material culture.

This contrast between past and present has become an important element of the practice. Familiar domestic objects are removed from their original function and given a new aesthetic presence, while references to Dutch art history are reinterpreted through photography. The resulting images move between familiarity and estrangement, seriousness and playfulness, while also reflecting on materiality, consumption, and the unexpected beauty of everyday objects.

Over time, Paula’s role within the practice has changed significantly. Originally the subject and muse of Hendrik’s photographs, she is now an artist and art historian in her own right and increasingly works alongside him as a co-director. Her academic and art-historical research contributes to the conceptual development of the images, while Hendrik translates these ideas into photographic form. Their studio functions as a Denkraum—a space for research, experimentation, and exchange between art history and contemporary photography.

Together, Hendrik and Paula explore themes including female identity, representation, authorship, textiles, tactility, and the relationship between body and image. Their work is characterized by a continuing interest in duality: photography and painting, father and daughter, male and female, past and present, reality and imagination, intimacy and distance. What began as a father photographing his daughter has developed into a long-term collaborative practice in which personal experience and art-historical research continuously inform one another.

Their work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in numerous museum and private collections. Hendrik and Paula Kerstens live and work in Amsterdam.