In 2016, I was commissioned by Oxfam to take photos's of peasant women in Tajikistan. Many of these women are left behind with their children because their husbands work as guest workers in Russia. The woman I photographed harvests everything on her own and successfully. She grows watermelons and grain. We walk through one of her grain fields here. With her earnings, she supports her two children, her mother and two female workers. This is her son.
Through an interpreter, I conducted several interviews with her. Despite not being able to understand each other, we understood each other very well on an emotional level. Because of our click, she showed great vulnerability and I was allowed to follow her everywhere with a camera. I felt very welcome and was allowed to get very close. An hour after taking this picture, she made me taste the most delicious and freshest watermelon ever. Any watermelon is nothing compared to this one.
I grew up in a small village in Brabant, where from an early age I was busy seeing the world in a dreamy perspective. For me, the camera is a viewing box in which I can capture my fantasies.
I'm raised in a small village in the..
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