Toos and Tiny

My mother’s mother and my father’s father.
This photo book is a tribute and ode to the generations before me.
The focus is on my grandmother Toos and grandfather Tiny, my mother’s mother and my father’s father. The two people who have had the longest influence on my parents’ formation and therefore also on mine.
Shared memories, stories and values strengthen family bonds and give me direction in life. From the simple gestures to the profound life lessons, every interaction with my (grand-)parents contributes to the person I am today. The negative memories and traits from a past are slowly purged as you seek to resolve your own sharp edges and not pass them on to later generations. I want to cherish this legacy and life lessons and pass on love and wisdom to future generations so that the cycle of connection and warmth continues.
With this work, I am exploring who my grandmother was, but also who my grandfather was. As I gain insight into who they were, I may be better able to see who I myself am or want to be.
Toos was the hub of the family. Tiny sat around listening.
Grandma Toos always lived in Nijmegen. My parents moved from Nijmegen and my grandma sent them the sports news accompanied by an A5 note with stories from her life in the years that followed. A mishmash of daily ups and downs and commentary on small and big news. What she wrote made me laugh and sometimes cry a little. After some back and forth, we decided together that she would reenact these stories in the same lively, humorous and tender way she writes about them. She becomes the mugger, the tree hugger, the cleaning lady and the flower cutter hiding in her garden.
Using my grandfather Tiny’s Big Shot camera and a whole pile of polaroids and magicubes flashes, I made still lifes out of his most treasured and personal items to try and get to know him better. His hairbrush, shaving brush, back scratcher, pipe, toiletry bag, slippers, cooking utensils, sewing thread, soaps, books and whatnot came along. I tried my best to get to know him better this way, but whether I came to understand him better, I don’t know. To me, he remains somewhat taciturn and unreflective, but a proud grandfather.
The warm feelings of memories passed down from generation to generation form the basis of my existence. In moments of nostalgia and love, I find the core of who I am and who my children can become. I am a child to my parents, a parent to my children. The moment my daughter left my wife and lay in my arms, I felt more, much more, and realised that I had become someone else. It went from me to them, or us, a new feeling, a combination of empathy and mortality.

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