Never before has a working-class neighbourhood – that will soon be demolished – been captured so impressively; intense portraits interspersed with tranquil images of surroundings that will one day disappear.
Van Cuyk won the trust of the residents and has been completely immersed with his camera in a highly non-conformist culture.
The photography is at the intersection of autonomous art and documentary-social photography. It is a story of disconnection and abandonment. What happens to people when you take them out of their familiar surroundings? But it is also a story about stigmas and about deviating from the established order.
‘I love ‘Democracy Photographers’. It feels like an injustice that there are things that not seen. Ugliness doesn’t exist for me. It is precisely this transience that carries incredible beauty.’
