Hans Eijkelboom

Over the last 25 years Hans Eijkelboom has visited cities around the world in pursuit of his conceptual photography. In his photographs, he focuses on the fashionable clothes and styling of approaching pedestrians, which he sorts by category – people in flannel shirts, fur coats and bands’ merchandising shirts are typologically collated in series. They initially suggest uniformity – with individual details only emerging at second glance. Or vice versa: a fashionable outfit, which seems stylistically individual, turns out to be part of the international mainstream when seen in series. Both aspects become very evident when leafing through Eijkelboom’s legendary book People of the Twenty-First Century. The Dutch photographer began working in series early on: in With my Family in the 1970s he staged himself as the father in numerous family photographs, in 10-Euro Outfits he portrayed himself in various outfits that had cost in total no more than 10 euros. In his photographic series, Eijkelboom comments on social and economic norms in subtle and quite humorous ways, and how these are conveyed and negotiated via extrinsic attributes.

This Wandersalon was developed in collaboration with Folkwang University of the Arts.