Joost Wensveen Dutch, b. 1967

Joost Wensveen is an economist whose passion is photography. Self-taught, Joost has developed and worked in various styles since first encountering photography in high school. Though he began in black and white, he has subsequently embraced digital photography and a wider colour palette.

Working with the new possibilities of digital, Joost takes photos that raise questions and offer new perspectives on realty. While his images often seem realistic at first, upon closer examination this realism breaks down to make way for fictive elements. Important inspiration for his work has come from magic realism, particularly painters such as Carel Willink.

More recently he has turned to the Melancholy project, which stemmed from the work of the American painter Edward Hopper. Filled with the stillness and loneliness so typical of Hopper, the photos evoke the feelings of the mid twentieth century and problematise our contemporary conceptions of communication.