This was my second workshop with Eyes in Progress. In the first one, portrait photography with Richard Dumas, I felt at home in doing strongly contrasted black and white portraits, in which Richard pushed me to go a lot further. With this second workshop by Claudine Doury, things were completely different. My project was clear from the start: I wanted to take pictures of the apartment of Michel Houellebecq (whose work I translate into Dutch). But this meant a completely different photographic approach for me, because I wanted to work in colour and to try and ‘catch’ the two people living in the apartment through the objects by which they are surrounded.
Claudine was extremely supportive of the project, and happy with the results within the limited time that was given to me. She has an incredible eye for reframing images, which is what I mainly worked on. If I had to resume this workshop in one word, it would be ‘frontal’: Claudine’s frontal approach, and her insistence to approach the subject frontally.
Martin de Haan, Paris, 16 November 2019