projects

“I am a nomad”.

Rob Houkes started taking photographs when he was ten years old. Seven years later he worked as a professional photographer. He was trained at the  “School voor Fotografie en Fototechniek” (nowadays part of the Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague)

After five years working as a photographer followed a career of ‘bits and pieces’: he worked as a skipper, a fisherman, a laborant and a coach for problem children.

Later on he established his own company for commercial communication and operated as a trainer, a consultant and a textwriter for years.

In-between Rob graduated as a teacher Dutch language and literature in 1981 (MO-A Nederlands) and studied literature and philosophy at Amsterdam University  (master degree Literary Theory (Algemene Literatuurwetenschap) in 1988)

He took up photography again in 2003 focusing on documentary and portrait.

In 2004 he started with doing photo-workshops with disadvantaged children and more recently (2010) he began also to work with adults, mostly members of oppressed, discriminated or stigmatized groups.

In Eastern Europa  (Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine) he did projects with orphans, abandoned kids and street-children and in the UK he worked with so-called ‘young offenders’.

In Slovakia he did photoworkshops with Roma-families living in the notorious Roma-ghetto Lunik IX, an isolated neighbourhood in Kosice.

In Lodz (Poland) he undertook a project, “Baluty-Baluty” at an old impoverished quarter in Lodz. Six families from ‘Baluty’ got the assignment to photograph their everyday life focusing on love, relationships and family events in particular.

In 2011 he began a series multi media presentations with Roma families in Lunik IX (Kosice).

In his photo-workshops Rob invites and encourages the participants to express themselves by taking pictures.

Other projects are social-historical and autonomous work.

It’s social, humanism, documentary, storytelling, research; moreover it’s curiousity, passion, compassion, love...