Amsterdam based photographer Anne Barlinckhoff is one of the freshest emerging talents! We first came across her work when we featured her collaboration with artist Laser 3.14 and were immediately intrigued by her approach of taking pictures; instead of staying in her comfort zone she actively goes out pursuing the subjects she wants to capture, resulting in unforced, sexy and fun looking photo shoots with quality results. “You won’t know until you fucking try” as she puts it herself.
“You won’t know until you fucking try”
As a 6 year old, a teacher once told Anne “You have gold in your little hands”, something she never forgot. At that time Anne began drawing, cutting up magazines, collecting images, making collages and sticking everything she found to be interesting into books. “My color books were always going with me wherever I was going. But mostly I used my black marker, to change the print in the color book before I was going to color it. And when I received a magazine I was the most happiest kid on earth” Anne explains.
As she got a bit older and started photographing, her cat was her first model, but she also used herself as subject. “Because I’m always there when an idea gets created in my mind”.
“The moment of being so passionate about something
that feels more important than anything else in the world,
and it also takes up all my time”
All in all Anne puts great effort in retaining her creative freedom, which might not be surprising as she already left behind a career in the advertising industry. Anne: “The moment of being so passionate about something that feels more important than anything else in the world, and it also takes up all my time. That’s how photography feels for me.”
“I loved the people working with in advertising and also the work itself. I worked day and night. But at some point I felt stuck, it’s a commercial thing and sometimes there were too many influences that breaks the love of the creativity. And when I don’t create fully with all the love I get mad. But also the feeling of creating something more limitless. A bit later I got accepted at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and decided to stop working in advertising and develop myself in a more personal way related to art and photography.”
Anne’s Mantra must be one of the best we’ve heard in a while. “You won’t know until you fucking try”. Anne: “It says it all. Without trying you don’t know and you didn’t experience it. And I love experiences. They make you see, feel, smell, touch, suffer and love things. And so much more. That’s how you learn and can be able to develop from there. Or to understand. But sometimes you need courage and a lot of perseverance. And lucky me, I got a lot of perseverance. But it didn’t fall out of the air. I survived and I’m extremely curious.”
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
– Robert Capa
Seeing her current body of work it might be surprising to hear that Anne wants to be a war photographer at one point.
“I always have the desire to discover. It’s a different way of confrontation, which I already do in some way. But also the stories that I would like to capture which makes a photograph a beautiful thing. Looking for that edge, feeling those boundaries or better said the feeling of no boundaries at all. It makes you realize how difficult life can be and how we sometimes have to fight for everything.”
“For me it’s a beautiful way of experiencing, being confronted and taking risks. I think war and love are probably the most painful things on this planet. And we can’t stop doing it. By capturing this in a unique way that it touches is a very vulnerable thing. This fragility is also a strength. It’s the contrast that attracts me. How can something so beautiful hurt so much? One of my favorite war photographers Robert Capa said once ‘If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.'”
So what can we expect from Anne in the near future? Well at the moment of publishing this interview, she just opened her first solo exhibition called ‘Female Trouble’ at Wieden + Kennedy in Amsterdam. “That’s pretty f-word exciting to me” as she puts it.
“Daily life is such a beautiful thing, I get inspiration everywhere and I will never lose my camera. Seeing the magic in the ordinary things in life. I would like to make a book about my work soon.”
– Anne
