Maartje Ansems Fotografie I Lab

Lab

Lab stands for laboratory and is a place for me to playfully discover new techniques and methods and to work out spontaneous ideas. I do this for example by using botanical materials or textiles, experimenting with old photo techniques, combining two and three-dimensional forms and images, or by painting on photographs.

Occasionally I involve other creative people in a project or idea. Sometimes an experiment is successful and sometimes not. Most important is the act of creating. Essential is the casual and unstrained character.

electroculture

I recently finished a course in electroculture, given by Yannick van Doorne. Lots of interesting topics were presented and one of them was the atmospheric antenna. It creates and locally enhances the (already present) amount of negative charged iones in the sky by means of the rods of metal and the copper tube. They attract the negative iones from the soil and let them flow into the sky. By placing an antenna, you create an invisible electrical umbrella that protects the environment by means of a more negative charged ion field.

As a result of that, all living organisms, including the plants in your garden thrive, when the amount of negative charged iones is bigger than the amount of positive charges iones. The same effect occurs naturally after a thunderstorm and near the waves of the sea or a natural waterfall. I made my own antenna and put it in my garden. I noticed quite quickly after placing the antenna, that my Fennel is growing very big!

Herbology

I recently started a herbalist study. It’s great to get to know the wonderful world of plants and their versatile possibilities. In the garden of the training institute, even in the autumn time, there is a lot of beauty to see. Besides that, I consider working with soil as a working material a very healthy counterpart for today’s digital life. It’s a very good way to stay grounded.

My new activities can be combined very well with photography, in fact, nature has become even more a source of inspiration for my work than it already was.

Question: there are two species in the photo that do not belong in an ‘ordinary’ farm garden, do you know which ones they are?

Lightpainting

This weekend (the end of october 2021) I finally had the chance to do some lightpainting again and it was fun! The weather was good and the sky was bright. Trees played a main role in the photos.

I made a digital collage of one of the results, combined with a photo made by the Hubble telescope.

Lege ruimte

Text collage from 2019. Every now and then I bring words togehter that I collect from magazines and news papers. This morning (07.10.2021) as I looked out of the window, I thought this one was suitable to illustrate the day. This is the translation:
The place of an empty space during wartime
The world is strange, but not that bad

We wait for bad people and trouble
How are we going to think smarter than the beasts?

Fighting statues facing eternal peace
A dance of opposites, making strange movements

Who wins?

The saviour digged himself in before bedtime
Why is destruction so stupid? Nobody wants this conflict

The new love for the game gathers one last chance
The secret weapon: a pact with the imaginary son

The hidden island of friendlyness in every one of us determines the future

new drawings

Das Allgäuer Fenster

Stills

I’ve just started making a new still life series with fossiles, gemstones and all kinds of natural materials!

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Le Mans

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Rembrandt van Rijn

Inspired by the 17th Century Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.

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lightpainting

Lightpainting: The combination of writing with fire (literally), flashlight and a long shutter speed results in this wonderful ‘special’ effect!

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text collage

Text collage made out of cut out words and characters from different newspapers. More text collages.

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back bone books

Workshop Artist Book with Claudia de la Torre of Back Bone Books

I have been asking myself following questions: What is a book and what could a book be? Does a book always need a beginning and an end? What does a page have look like, or could look like? Does a book always need text or a title?

I have been looking for a way to visualise the process of making a collage in the form of a book. The different parts of the collage became separate pages and invited the viewer/reader to create new combinations and figures themselves, by turning the pages in their own order.

Thank you very much Claudia for your input and your constructive criticism!

Fantasy Museum

An imaginative exhibition in an unexpected museum.

How could it look like when you put real works in different kind of (public)spaces? What kind of place or space works better, a museum with white empty walls, an inpersonal public space, just the street or a monumental building? If it would be a public space, what could the function of this space add to the shown works, how do they mingle. In what way this effects the viewer if he or she isn’t expecting to see art in the first place?

Just some questions, to be continued…