For this portrait of John Irving, we met at an Amsterdam five-star hotel. I brought with me a portable studio and a white backdrop. John proved to be a very cooperative and talented model. From the images, I shot all pictures were very good and this image was used for the HP/de Tijd magazine. Sometime after the first publication, six portraits of John were used for six paperback dutch cover picture versions of his popular books.
Of Course I knew about Peter Post and was invited to his villa on the outskirts of Amsterdam for Esquire magazine. I also knew he was like me the son of an Amsterdam butcher. In the old days I was told, cyclists had to put a tender piece of meat inside their cycle shorts to protect their behinds. So, I brought him a good juicy and bloody steak and did some pictures with that. Blood running from his hands. For those people who know a thing or two about the hard life of a professional cyclist understand the connection was clear. But even without the bloody steak, you can see the scars and stitches in Peter Post’s worn but still good-looking face.
I met Jan Montyn before during a prior photoshoot. I was not so much aware of his life story then. This time perhaps 20 years later we had a much more personal connection but Jan was facing health issues and did not live much longer. I personally like the introspective character of this portrait of a man who witnessed hardship and wars and came out of that incredible life a great artist.
At the time of my meeting with Bernardo, he was working on the Sheltering Sky movie. This introspective portrait was shot in a very small production office in London, using a film spotlight and my trusty Hasselblad camera.
I was able to have a private portrait sitting with Polanski in the Pulitzer hotel Amsterdam. The bronze statue of the young female in the background refers to his personal life regarding relationships with women.
Peter Klashorst is after 60 years of making art a 100% certified “art barbarian” and one of the last art Mohicans. He was at a very young age confident enough to sell his first paintings and never stopped. We met before in the late 90s for a magazine picture in Amsterdam and we had immediately a good interaction and fun. We met again in Cambodia late 2010 for to cover his art latest show about the killed Khmer Rouge victims that he photographed at the Tuol Sleng torture museum in Phnom Penh and then he recreated their images on life-size intense painted canvases. I wrote the six-page feature article and images for this article published in HP/de Tijd magazine. After that, we did many more articles and newspaper stories. https://michaelklinkhamer.blogspot.com/2011/05/peter-klashorst-in-phnom-phen-cambodja.html