The story began in April 2019 when he met the Portugese photographer Paulo Nozolino in a workshop in Arles, France. The title was : « Jusqu’à l ‘os », which means « Down to the bone ».
The theme appealed to him since his aim in photography is to reveal another reality within the reality surrounding us. As a matter of fact on that moment his project « Dancing in the Emptiness » has been born. It should be a series of 4 frame collages. The first four pictures have been exhibited during the annual international photo festival « Les Rencontres de la photographie » in Arles. Afterwards his work deepened : he wanted to go further than « down to the bone » and arrive at the core of human being, even further than personality which is constructed after birth. His question : what has been man before birth, or after death ? Hence sprang the title « Dancing in the emptiness ». This emptiness, following him, is not void, but awareness and love. During a year he worked on the theme resulting into 21 collages; he got involved in a process in which he tried to avoid all superfluous information. It came as a big surprise that he discovered the talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, whose book « I Am That » is the best known. « Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment ». His talks motivated him and were a great help in the composition and storytelling of the project.
About Eric Pijnaken
Growing old he tasted what it to feel truly alive. It helps to be more open to the world, with less prejudices and even more discoveries. However he did not become a saint. Born in Rotterdam during wartime in 1942, he remembers German soldiers marching on the bridge in front of his parents’ house. A German guard on a wooden stool in a tree of the garden behind the house. This formed the basis for the way he later looked to the world, especially with regard to the authorities.
In his youth he made a short movie about suffering around the statue (man with heart ripped off) of Zadkine in the center of the bombed city of Rotterdam. Zadkine reduces the figures to their most concise and telling form. Since that time his photo work focuses on the essential of what he sees.
At young age he has been awarded for photocontests. After a careeer as journalist modern art, and later as socio-economical and political affairs as editor of a leading daily newspaper, he moved to the French province Ardèche, where he freely could enjoy the photography with many exhibitions in France, and some in Holland and Switzerland. Meanwhile he has been rewarded several times by the Tokyo International Foto Awards, and other rewards by Neutral Density Photo Awards and Minimalist Photo Awards, Fine Art Photography Awards, Monochrome Photo Awards, Spider Awards, Monovisions Photography Awards.
