Info

Lou-Lou van Staaveren (1990, Aalsmeer) is a Dutch photographer based in Amsterdam.

Artist statement
Coming from a family of flowers growers, I have always been drawn to plants and greenery. The garden has become the arena of my photographic practice: it is both my playground and my lab.

To me, gardening and photography are surprisingly similar. Both the gardener and photographer move along the same scale of control, with observation on one end and intervention on the other. Both construct new realities – paradises or utopias if you will – the gardener using landscape and the photographer using image.

The images I make spark a sense of (eerie) wonder, encouraging the audience to question their anthropocentric position. What does it mean to idealise and control our natural environment?

Contact

Bunsenstraat 6-1
1098 RL Amsterdam
The Netherlands

+31 6 26264534
loux2vs(at)gmail.com

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Education

2021
BA Photography, Royal Academy of Arts (KABK), The Hague
2015
BA Media and Culture, University of Amsterdam
Commissions / publications

El Pais Semanal
Lens Culture
MacGuffin Magazine
Mister Motley
De Correspondent
Ecco Leather
BOMBA Amsterdam
Moerheim
Fou Fow Udon

 

Shows

2023
Exhibiting Pleasant Place the book, Photobookmuseum Cologne
2023
Changing Perspectives, Kunstgarage Franx, Zoetermeer
2022
Sprouts II, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam
2022
Wonder Window, Vandejong Creative Agency, Amsterdam
2022
Les Enfants de Paulette Periat, Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm
2022
Kassel Dummy Awards 2022, International photography festivals
2021
Sprouts Young Talent 2021, SBK Gallery, Amsterdam
2021
Call For Graduates, Public Space, Den Haag
2021
Graduation show, KABK, The Hague
2020
Kifl the Kid Salon, Billytown, The Hague
2020
Mother Tongue, Grey Space, The Hague
2018
Rice and Beans, Medium Gallery, Bratislava
Colophon

Typefaces Keroïne Doux Extreme and Suisse Int’l


Website by Vera van de Seyp

© all rights reserved, Lou-Lou van Staaveren, 2021.



Index
Pleasant Place shown at Changing Perspectives
2023
Waterschappen for Driessen group
2022
Jacqueline de Jong('s home) for MacGuffin Magazine issue 11. The Chain
2022
Pleasant Place publication series
2022
Prospect Cottage for Pleasant Place issue 1. Enclosures
2022
Portfolio publication in El Pais' Sunday magazine EL SEMANAL
2022
Claustrophobic nature for De Correspondent
2022
Pleasant Place
2021
GARDENS: physical, visual, and imaginary (thesis)
2021
Pleasant Place (the book)
2021
Tomatoes, etc.
2021
Commission for Ecco Leather
2021
Sunflower series
2021
Natural Beekeeping
2020
Balcony (First Wave)
2020
Aalsmeer Plot Project
2019
Haystacks
2019
Expert
2018
15 million years below sea level
2018
Essetakkesterfte
2018
Flower Fairs
2018
Portraits
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food
fun
garden
gate
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lawnmower
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Project info

BA Photography Graduation Project. 

The garden is not far from my home. It is green and colorful, enclosed by tall hedges of yew and hornbeam. The garden is enormous, but its clever design with many different garden rooms makes it feel cozy and intimate. There’s a pond with waterlilies, a greenhouse, a flower covered hill, a vegetable plot, a shed with tools and a cat, a little forest, a maze, an orchard and much more. No place is better for playing hide and seek, for casual strolls, for contemplation.

Gardening and photography go very well together. In essence, the two are surprisingly similar. Both the gardener and the photographer slide along the same scale of control, with observation on one end and intervention on the other. Both construct new realities – paradises or utopias if you will – the gardener using landscape and the photographer using images.

Pleasant Place is the English translation of Locus Amoenus: a literary concept describing an idealized natural retreat inspired by the Garden of Eden and Elysium. This remote garden hide-out functions as a landscape of the mind, serves to highlight the difference between urban and rural life and is a place of refuge from the processes of time and mortality. Welcome to my pleasant place.

 

2021 ongoing
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 3 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 4 / 5
Tags

animals
flower
food
gate
plants
self-initiated
series
sky
tool
tree
Project info
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 3 / 5
autonomy: 3 / 5
living: 3 / 5
Tags

Project info

A series about the waterschappen – local institutions that manage water secrity in The Netherlands – for Driessen group. 

2022
Commissioner
1130
Scales

realness: 4 / 5
autonomy: 0 / 5
living: 5 / 5
Tags

clouds
cow
landscape
reflection
sky
water
Project info

Pleasant Place is a growing collection of publications about the art of gardening. Pleasant Place informs and inspires by offering both practical and in-depth information as well as unexpected approaches to everyday garden tasks and garden design. Through collaborations with experts and artists Pleasant Place caters both to those who grow gardens as well as those who imagine gardens.

The Pleasant Place publication series is a spin off of my graduation project, developed and created in collaboration with Floor Kortman and Guus Kaandorp. 

The design is taken care of by Miquel Hervas Gômez and Cesar Rogers from fanfare, and distribution by Jesse Presse (NL/BE), Antenne Books (UK) and Idea Books (all other). 
The first two issues, 1. Enclosures and 2. Nasturtiums (Tropeaolum majus), were launched in October 2022 and are available online and in (book)shops all over the world.

Pleasant Place is kindly supported by Mondriaan Fonds

2022 ongoing
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 3 / 5
autonomy: 3 / 5
living: 3 / 5
Tags

Project info

with Guus Kaandorp

2022
Commissioner
1135
Scales

realness: 5 / 5
autonomy: 3 / 5
living: 5 / 5
Tags

Project info

 Still life experiments

2021 ongoing
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 2 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 2 / 5
Tags

food
reflection
series
serious
Project info
2022
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 3 / 5
autonomy: 3 / 5
living: 3 / 5
Tags

Project info
Commissioner
1129
Scales

realness: 5 / 5
autonomy: 0 / 5
living: 2 / 5
Tags

curtains
people
portrait
Project info

Find the online article here :)

2022
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 3 / 5
autonomy: 3 / 5
living: 3 / 5
Tags

Project info

Graphic design by Guus Kaandorp

Shortlisted for the Kassel Dummy Award '22

24cm x 32,5cm 
71 pages
digital print
hardcover
edition of 50

SOLD OUT

– Project description – 
The garden is not far from my home. It is green and colorful, enclosed by tall hedges of yew and hornbeam. The garden is enormous, but it’s clever design with many different garden rooms makes it feel cozy and intimate. There’s a pond with water lilies, a greenhouse, a flower covered hill, a vegetable plot, a shed with tools and a cat, a little forest, a maze, an orchard and much more. No place is better for playing hide and seek, for casual strolls, for contemplation.

Gardening and photography go very well together. In essence, the two are surprisingly similar. Both the gardener and the photographer slide along the same scale of control, with observation on one end and intervention on the other. Both construct new realities – paradises or utopias if you will – the gardener using landscape and the photographer using images.

Pleasant Place is the English translation of Locus Amoenus: a literary concept describing an idealized natural retreat inspired by the Garden of Eden and Elysium. This remote garden hide-out functions as a landscape of the mind, serves to highlight the difference between urban and rural life and is a place of refuge from the processes of time and mortality. Welcome to my pleasant place.

 

2021
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 2 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 3 / 5
Tags

animals
clouds
flower
fun
garden
gate
hedge
landscape
leaf
patterns
plant
plants
self-initiated
series
sky
sun
tree
view
Project info

20 x 25cm
Edition of 50
Digital print on art paper
Custom made passe partout
Mahogany frame

Reach out for more information on pricing and shipping:)

2021
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 4 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 3 / 5
Tags

flower
fun
happy
plant
portrait
sad
series
smile
surprised
Project info

BA Photography thesis

Graphic design by Eva van Bemmelen
Edition of 35
SOLD OUT

– Abstract –

As the title suggests, this thesis is about gardens. It is about different kinds of gardens: physical gardens, gardens in visual arts and imaginary gardens.

My research started in the summer of 2020 when I read the following quote in The Well Gardened Mind: Rediscovering Nature in the Modern World by psychiatrist Sue Stuart-Smith: “All gardens exist on two levels: on the one hand there’s the real, physical garden and on the other there’s the garden of our imagination.”[1]  I am fascinated by both gardens ­– the physical as well as the imaginary – and explore my relationship to both in this thesis.

I have divided my research and this text into two autonomous parts – simply called Part One and Part Two – because of the different natures of my research. The first part is more dry, factual and informative while the latter is a very personal account.
Part One consists of two chapters. The first chapter is rather general: it looks at the etymology as well as at the definition of the concept ‘garden’ and takes us through the history of Western European garden culture. Starting with the origin of gardens some 12.000 years ago we swiftly travel through gardens in the Antiquities, Medieval sober gardens, harmonious Renaissance gardens, rigid and formal Baroque gardens, painterly romantic gardens in the Romantic era, Modernist cozy gardens and end in our contemporary democratic backyards. The second chapter zooms in on gardens and visual arts. It starts with a visual break – which is to be enjoyed in the visual appendix – and moves on to analyzing the practices of the following four gardener-artists: Claude Monet, Edward Steichen, Derek Jarman and Elspeth Diederix. A brief chapter dedicated to the relationship between the photographic medium and the garden concludes Part One.
Part Two is about my personal relationship with gardens and gardening. The first subchapter explains that, to me, gardening is both spiritual and political. It is spiritual because it helps me to connect to both the physical and non-physical, it is meditative and magical. At the same time gardening is political. Producing your own fruit and veg is an anti-capitalist act, a hopeful investment in the future, and challenges our capitalist notion of time. The second subchapter introduces the concept of ‘imaginary garden’ and describes its place in my photography practice. It concludes with a comparison between the gardener and the photographer, whose work – in essence – is surprisingly similar.

 

 

2021
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 5 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 3 / 5
Tags

Project info

with Guus Kaandorp

2021
Commissioner
1106
Scales

realness: 3 / 5
autonomy: 0 / 5
living: 2 / 5
Tags

clouds
cow
flower
landscape
leaf
leather
plant
reflection
skin
sky
sun
view
Project info
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 5 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 2 / 5
Tags

leaf
patterns
plant
view
Project info
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 3 / 5
autonomy: 3 / 5
living: 3 / 5
Tags

Project info

Portraits of twenty of the most common bees in the Amsterdam region. Still lifes of the attributes of natural bee-keepers. 

Collaboration with The Natural History Museum Rotterdam and Wellbeeing. 

2020
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 5 / 5
autonomy: 1 / 5
living: 5 / 5
Tags

animals
self-initiated
Project info

Experimental and playful project documenting the transformation of my parents garden in Aalsmeer. 

@aalsmeerplotproject

2019 ongoing
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 5 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 5 / 5
Tags

animals
clouds
dirt
dog
flower
food
fun
gate
lawnmower
oma
people
plant
self-initiated
series
sky
tent
tree
view
Project info
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 0 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 0 / 5
Tags

self-initiated
Project info
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 5 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 0 / 5
Tags

car
clouds
curtains
grey
landscape
rain
self-initiated
series
sky
sun
tent
tree
view
Project info
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 5 / 5
autonomy: 0 / 5
living: 3 / 5
Tags

Project info
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 4 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 0 / 5
Tags

Project info
Commissioner
Scales

realness: 2 / 5
autonomy: 5 / 5
living: 2 / 5
Tags

self-initiated
tree