Rob Hornstra
Rob Hornstra (born 1975)[1] is a Dutch photographer and self-publisher of documentary work, particularly of areas of the former Soviet Union.
[citation needed] Hornstra studied Social and Legal Services at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences from 1994 to 1998; for a year from summer 1996, he interned and then worked as a probation officer.
From September 1998, he worked for over eight years as a host and bartender at Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht.
[2] For his graduation project he spent one month in Russia photographing the lives of the first generation of young people growing up after the fall of communism.
In the same year that he graduated he published this series as his first book, Communism and Cowgirls.
Since graduation Hornstra has combined editorial work for newspapers and magazines with more personal, longer-term documentary work in the Netherlands, Iceland, and the former Soviet Union.
[3] Hornstra prefers to work with film, in medium format or large format: [It] takes me quite a bit of time to set up my Mamiya medium-format camera and Horseman large-format camera.
[4]In 2006, together with the art historian Femke Lutgerink, Hornstra started work on Fotodok,[n 1] an Utrecht-based organization that arranges exhibitions and other events for documentary photography.
Itself inspired by Fotohof in Salzburg, Fotodok hopes eventually to create an exhibition space for documentary photography in Utrecht.
Fotodok was launched in 2008; Hornstra stepped down as creative director in September 2009.
[2][4][5] Starting with his first collection, Communism and Cowgirls, Hornstra has published his own books.
These skip forewords by other writers, biographical notes, ISBNs and the other trappings of conventionally published books; by taking advance orders and selling copies directly and also working through a small number of retailers, Hornstra is able to avoid normal distribution channels.
[3][6][7] Together with the writer and filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen, in 2009 Hornstra started the Sochi Project, which over five years would document the area of Sochi (Krasnodar Krai, Russia) and the changes to it during the preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
[6] Hornstra and Van Bruggen express surprise that the site chosen for such a large winter event would be one so close to politically volatile areas such as Abkhazia and one that by Russian standards has exceptionally mild winters.
[6] Under the slogan slow journalism, the pair request donations from the public for the crowdfunding of a project whose timescale is impossible for the mass media.
[7][8] The stories Hornstra and Van Bruggen collected as part of the project have appeared in newspapers, photobooks and online over the course of the five-year period.
The project culminated in the retrospective book An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus published by Aperture in 2013, and in 2014 an exhibition that toured Europe, America and Canada.
Hornstra and Van Bruggen have also created more democratic exhibitions, made entirely of newsprint, that can be shown on the walls of small galleries with no budget for framed prints or video installations: On the Other Side of the Mountains (2010), two copies of which create an exhibition;[n 2] Paris Photo Newsprint Exhibition (2012), with thirty photographs;[n 3] and three versions of Billboard Sochi Singers, each containing the sheets to assemble either of two posters.
[n 4] Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said "Whichever way you look at it, The Sochi Project is an incredible piece of journalism, both visual and written, and a glimpse of the medium's future.
Photography by Stein and Issa, Orri, Thomas Neumann, Renja Leino, Arturas Valiauga, and Hornstra.
[n 7] (Rúntur, literally "round tour", and elsewhere a pub crawl or a drive around a circular course or even repeatedly around a single block, here means a repeated drive around the perimeter road of a village.)
(in English) The title derives from the assertion in the Russian magazine Finans[82] that Russia then had 101 (US dollar) billionaires.
[n 8] The book was nominated for the New York Photo Awards 2009[83][84] and listed among Photo-Eye's best ten photobooks for 2008.
(in English) A cheaper edition (no gatefolds) with slightly updated text, whose publication was prompted by the news that the number of billionaires had plummeted to 49.
The first of a series of annual publications from the Sochi Project, this booklet is about Sanatorium Metallurg at Sochi, which, like the other Soviet-era sanatoria in the area, appeared likely to be demolished and replaced with an expensive hotel in time for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
[n 9] Sanatorium won the "Photographic Book" category of the New York Photo Awards in 2010.
[n 10] The book was listed among Photo-Eye's best photobooks for 2010[92] and was nominated for the 2011 Dutch Doc award.
A photograph album on newsprint (tabloid format) about the village of Krasny Vostok, in Karachay–Cherkessia.
Hornstra and Van Bruggen chose Krasny Vostok, on the other side of the mountains from Sochi, because nothing unusual happens there.
A boxed set, edited by Harvey Benge, of ten books of photographs taken on 20 June 2010, each book by one of Jessica Backhaus, Gerry Badger, Benge, John Gossage, Todd Hido, Hornstra, Rinko Kawauchi, Eva Maria Ocherbauer, Martin Parr and Alec Soth.
