Cas Slagboom

Cas Slagboom was born in Vlissingen, Netherlands. As a child he learned the analogue photography process in his father's darkroom, an on-going learning process, a drive to be able to manipulate the technology to tell a story. Before he started as an artist, he spent years in the wild as a mountaineer. In search of a confrontation with life and wondering about the strength and the urge to survive, he started drawing. The fascination for the relationship we have with nature as a complex and amazing ecosystem arose with his never-ending curiosity and to share his view with others. After many wanderings through the wild, he started at the St. Joost school of Art & Design in Breda in Design & Fine Art. Afterwards he mainly focused on visual communication, fascinated with the possibilities of interaction. As Creative Director he seized even more opportunities to further specialize himself with the digital technical developments. In 2002, he started Motion Works with his wife in a joint ambition to use images to tell stories. They realized projects and "social art" like We come Closer to build bridges somehow and focused on narrative and impact. As a result, Cas returned to the image making itself, almost as a painter. Nature, and in particular our relationship with it, always had a prominent place in his work. It is a deeply rooted realization of being part of something infinitely versatile and great. ARTIST STATEMENT - Magnifying Beauty I seek beauty in the way in which the combination of different images evoke an experience. For me, photography is more than capturing the perfect moment. Every time I try to capture my astonishment with a single photo, I am disappointed. This was not what I want to see and feel. It is larger, more complex, more diffuse. I have to bring all those fragments together. In compositions in which they together tell a story that transcends my understanding. So, that every time I look at it, I can be surprised again. All the photographic technology that we have to capture our world in images may give us the idea that we really "see" it. But nothing gives me more liberty than letting go of this straight way of observing, in order to experience the shortest route to wonder, and the love that follows from it. I use modern technology to find a visual language that exceeds the photographic moment, so that there is sufficient room for the complexity of what we call reality.