It was end of 2018 when we started talks on a joint project. This was after we met at an exhibition in Amsterdam in 2017. Where Rob stated to Anna, that by looking at her photo work, it was as if he was looking at the work of a female version of himself.
When we finally sat down in Anna’s studio to explore the shape of a collaboration. Anna suggested that we could oblige our artistic aspirations and common goal by undertaking a road trip. With personal themes from our individual photo work. Like time, loss, intimacy, existence, the trip could be a metaphor for the journey through life. With visual and intellectual efforts to gain a deeper understanding of the adult male-female relationship. The journey would take place in Western Europe, in Belgium, Luxemburg and The Netherlands.
We started out with an experimental photo weekend in spring 2019. Photographing each other in a hotel and its surrounding dunes. To see if the visual and contemplative language was there. From this experience, we felt the road trip could take off soon.
To have a suitable car for the trip we checked rental stations across Benelux to make a reservation. But shortly after this research, we considered buying a second hand car. Right after, we ran into the seller of a classic Volvo 850.
August 2019: as the summer sun rises, we start our road trip. As it serves as an extracted version of life’s road. Our chemical partnership soon starts to function as a metaphor for marriage. On and off the road, we insert ourselves in our pictures. To grasp the processes that are taking place in relational life. Translating deeply personal feelings through craft made photographs.
The trip does exactly what we pursued. To add up all the melancholy, the contemplations, scars, longings and creative visual astonishment we were looking for. It even invites us to start writing poems and snippets of conversations we have on relational topics.
Right after we hit homebase, returning from our first chapter on the road. One written text for an Instagram post on the project turns out to be a first choice for a project title. As the post says:
“We parked our dream vehicle down by the river. Walked to our new shelter and faced a small wooden bed. I thought, can we enter this bed together? She said, it is just another dream vehicle.”
Only weeks after this, it provides the icing on the cake: ‘The Dream Vehicle’. This project title represents the various vehicles used in the project, like the car, the beds and even ourselves as a vehicle.