Lately I have been going through life

as if there were a photographic plate

inside me

making a foolproof recording

of everything around me,

down to the smallest detail.

I am well aware of it;

everything is sharply outlined inside me.

Later, much later perhaps,

I shall develop and print it all.

That painful longing that could never be satisfied, the pining for something I thought unattainable, which I called “my creative urge”

There are books that reflect our image perfectly, and others that shape us while accompanying our growth. The impact of Etty Hillesum's diaries has entered the lives of many people, and has been felt as a watershed moment for growth and for drawing new meaning. If I were to seek the roots of the photographic project I have been carrying out since April 2017, I too, would trace it back to her exercise books; to the tangle of questions and the continuous balancing and redefinition of the young Dutch woman.

I organized a trip from Middelburg to Westerbork, researching and tracking all the houses and spaces that may have influenced the perceptive construction of Etty Hillesum. I rang bells and sent postcards, to try to get in touch with the current residents. It was a sort of ethnographic research, working in particular on the visuals and trying to trace the fragment of an atmosphere, always bearing in mind Hillesum's expressive diaries and other writings.