6 Months Ago, I Started With Photography To Capture My Handmade Historical And Fantasy Costumes

6 months ago, when the whole covid epidemic started, I started trying out photography in order to capture my handmade costumes. For all my life, I’ve had a great love for stories, being either historical or fairytales. This resulted in my small ‘Library’ containing about 600 books, in different languagues.

During my bachelor of music studies in the Netherlands, I started sewing by hand my first historical costumes. This resulted in my own theatrical performance for my final exam, in the form of a small opera all in baroque dresses made by me. After that I kept on sewing historical but also fantasy and fairytale costumes after moving to Germany six years ago to pursue my masters degree in singing. Just after the pandemic started, like so many other singers and musicians, I found myself out of work. Yes I still had teaching, but without being able to perform, not only did a huge financial part suddenly fall away, but also a creative outlet, a passion, the thing that I had lived for most of my life.

Creativity can develop in the most difficult of places, which made me turn to photography. A way to capture all the images, dreams, fantasies and inspirations that were stuck in my head.

In a couple of weeks I had mastered the technical capabilities of my (borrowed) camera, and I started asking others to style and photograph them in my own handmade costumes. (according to all covid regulations of course)

Sewing, styling and photographing myself and those around me, has helped me through a difficult time where I thought I had lost my identity, but found it again it other creative outbursts.

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