Hendrik Kerstens - Black Cap

Photograph made by Hendrik Kerstens of his daughter Paula.

Hendrik Kerstens is a Dutch photographer who, since 1995, has been photographing his daughter Paula. He was born in 1956 in the Hague, The Netherlands. He started a series of photographing his daughter’s life, initially capturing her in everyday poses.

Kerstens gradually expanded his practice to create carefully composed portraits that playfully refer to the works of the Dutch Old Masters and the Italian Renaissance. These images use everyday items as props, such as a dishtowel or cream standing in for a maiden’s cloth and wig, and still rely on Paula as his primary subject.

His photography was awarded a Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize from the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2008, and has been shown in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. He was given his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Museum for the City of New York in 2009, and he has since been commissioned for several covers of New York Times Magazine.

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