An orange glow pervades this book as if photographer Paul Kooiker’s nudes exist in an unending sunset. They also evoke a strong association with faded Polaroids and pigments suffering the ravages of time. Kooiker’s dumpy bodies are always still lifes, objects in a landscape rather than portraits of people. The reclining female figures are here presented almost in passing as a series of landscape-format illustrations.
The cover has been given a paper wrapper that endows the book with both gloss and tactility. Gallery owner Willem van Zoetendaal – a man who has graphic design running in his veins – always takes enormous care with his photobooks, all the time trying to showcase his photographers’ work in the best possible light. Here the slim and floppy leaf-through book is just the right medium for photographs that might almost have been taken by an amateur in his back garden.