'Kaatje'

'Kaatje' is very personal project. By asking others to collaborate with me and offer them a free downloadable print, I hope to reach a lot of people and in this way ask them to look out for 'Kaatjes' of today. The children (as well as adults living with their childhood trauma) who struggle. From my own experience I feel that the people around me who paid me a little attention helped me to keep on going. Even the smallest gesture like a kind word meant so much to me. There is one main image in the project. A portrait of 'Kaatje' in black and white. I offer 1 of them (with 2 Kaatjes) to download for FREE and ask people to print her and add their own creative layer to it. This can be a poem, just a word, some 'scribbles', paint her or whatever they feel like and hang it on their wall or give it away. And maybe even ask others to leave a small message on the print as well. In this way I also hope to make people aware of the power of photography and make art yourself. This helped me so much during the period of finally healing. The base of 'Kaatje' is photography. A few portraits of twin girls that kept coming back to me, over and over again, until I realised that they are the 'why' in my art photography. In the end I hope that the project contains different works of Kaatje made by all kinds of people, next to the prints that I am making at the moment and investigate in this way who's story we are looking at when we see a portrait. Is it the girl in the image? Is it the story of the photographer/artist? Or is it the story of the viewer? More information about this project: corinabouweriks.com/kaatje