Photographer Eva Veldhoen is particularly drawn by ordinary, everyday objects. In things that usually go unnoticed, she discovers the most beautiful details – beauty in what is. To show and celebrate the true beauty [essence] of things, Eva likes to closely zoom in on her subject and strip out any unnecessary details. This often results in decontextualized and somewhat abstract images through which she invites you to see things in a new way.

The creative process is an important theme in Eva’s work. Ever since leaving her lawyer’s career in 2018, she has been discovering how rich life can be if we approach it with curiosity and openness, follow our intuition and surrender to the process.

In 2020, Eva published her first book, ‘Play’ – about play as an attitude to life – which was nominated for the 2021 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. The next year, Eva graduated from Fotoschool Statief in Utrecht. Her graduation series was published in her second publication: ‘alles is er al’ / ‘everything is already there’.

For her latest series – ‘I feel like I need something bigger from life’ – UNFOLDING FUTURE – Eva photographed the paper planes of her 8-year-old son. Out of fascination for their seemingly endless variations, she captured close to 100 of them, all different. Inspiration came at a moment in her life when she was experiencing no sense of direction, a void. What does the future look like if there’s no plan? Paper planes became a metaphor for futures unfolding, for living with the unknown.