At that point, he exchanged this traditional collage technique – cutting, pasting and retouching in the darkroom – for image processing on the computer, working in an idea-driven manner.

Although he does make use of pure photomontage – he never applies so-called morphing techniques – the final result strives for content aligned to natural reality rather than to surrealism.

After The Office, he created the Study for Women series, which comprises a number of female portraits that refer to the magic realism art movement.

In the book Ruud van Empel Photoworks 1995–2010, she wrote: ‘Van Empel’s virtuosity lies in his capacity to combine in photography the kind of ideas anchored in painting (historical references, the power of a glimpse, use of colour) and cinema (structure with multiple images and the power of a narrative), and to do so on a large scale.

Van Empel placed neatly dressed, black boys and girls in paradisical settings of unspoiled, non-existent natural surroundings.

Since the international recognition of his work gave Van Empel the status of an artist with an own independent form language, he has progressively extended his oeuvre with the Theatre series from 2010-2013, and Souvenir, which provided a charged picture of his youth in Breda.

This generates a certain discomfort, an uneasiness that touches upon what was described as 'das Unheimliche' (the uncanny) at the beginning of the 20th century.’ Although the photographic images seem to capture an epoch, you can hardly assign a date to any of them.

The significance of these is shown in the countless publications and international exhibitions of this work, not only in institutions specialized in photography but also in renowned museums for modern visual art.

Harvey Wang is an American documentary director who interviewed Ruud van Empel in 2010 for his production From Darkroom to Daylight.