Femke den Hollander (°1979, Bruges, Belgium) studied social and cultural work at the VIVES-university after spending 12 months in Zimbabwe as a high school student. She worked 20 years as a social worker, mostly with teenagers and young people.
An important part of this work was the development of different educational and awareness programs as well as co-working projects with other organizations on political and public social issues.
She feels strongly about documentary work. At the age of 30 she realized she could actually buy a camera to document people and society and their stories. So she did. Six years later she graduated in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bruges.
She participated in several exhibitions and social and cultural projects in Bruges, as a photographer, social investigator and, in some cases, instigator. She's looking for unknown environments, trying to document the lives of people she does not know. Spending time with them teaches her what might remain unseen, unknown and unspoken when no one captures it. A never ending story.
She also works on her own projects and art collections, focusing mainly on the beauty and vulnerability of nature in recent years.
