PERSBERICHT Expositie & Boeklancering ‘The Dream Vehicle’: Een introspectieve reis naar het mysterie van tijd en liefde Op 22 april 2023 lanceert kunstenaarsduo WitkowskaVerbunt in kunstruimte Atelier K84 in Amsterdam de multimediale expositie ‘The Dream Vehicle’. De tentoonstelling en boeklancering is de vrucht van vier jaren fotografisch onderzoek, waarin Anna Witkowska en Rob Verbunt tijdens zeven road trips door de Benelux, hun licht schijnen op het mysterie van tijd en liefde. Het boek The Dream Vehicle, uitgegeven door Uitgeverij Lecturis, […]

For English, scroll down   Met de succesvolle crowdfunding in december 2022 is de volgende fase in ons project aangebroken: het produceren van het The Dream Vehicle boek.Het ontwerp hiervoor, gemaakt door Sybren Kuiper, was digitaal reeds in de eindfase en met de drukwerkbegeleider en lithograaf toegevoegd aan het team, bekeken en wogen we de afgelopen maand verschillende papiersoorten. Ook keken we naar de meest geschikte cover en bindwijze.  Juiste verteltrantOm het boek te maken, gebaseerd op wat we de afgelopen […]

  For English, scroll down   AMSTERDAM – Na 40 dagen crowdfunden via het online platform Voordekunst zijn we er als WitkowskaVerbunt samen met 122 donateurs in geslaagd, het bedrag te verzamelen voor de productie van het The Dream Vehicle boek dat in 2023 verschijnt. Op de 39e dag van de campagne werd het gestelde doelbedrag van €10.000 bereikt, waarna de teller tot het einde in beweging bleef. Het feest was toen al losgebarsten. Samen met de 122 betrokkenen realiseren we met […]

For English, scroll down   Wat trok heel erg onze aandacht in de visuele en populaire cultuur, voordat we in 2019 aan onze reis begonnen?  Ons plan na enkele verkennende fotoshoots met elkaar in Amsterdam, was om onze kersverse artistieke samenwerking in de vorm te gieten van een road trip. We hadden nog geen titel voor het project of een geschikte auto maar we bespraken vaak inspiratiebronnen en hoe we het project er fotografisch uit wilden laten zien. Hoe het […]

Friends, We are excited to share, the incredibly beautiful message we received, that the Prins Bernhard Cultuur Fonds Noord-Holland decided to support our project by rewarding our running crowdfunding campaign with a donation. Apart from this wonderful gift to get closer to realizing our The Dream Vehicle book, it makes us proud and honored to get the recognition from the Cultuur Fonds as photographic artists. With the Crowdfunding Campaign we, Anna and Rob, are gaining the support to realize a unique […]

Dear friends,  You can watch us on video now, as we’re campaigning for The Dream Vehicle book! We are extremely excited that this November, we are officially out with our fresh Crowdfunding Campaign for The Dream Vehicle book!  After four years of working on imagery and lyrics, during our extensive road trips through the Benelux, we felt there was a substantial amount of quality content, which made us contact Dutch designer Sybren Kuiper to proceed onto the next phase. As […]

In The Dream Vehicle, we embark on a road trip across the Benelux in a classic Volvo that we bought for the trip.  The road trip, our metaphor for the journey through life, shows us in a poetic, introspective study on time and love. Where daily events are stylized into visual contemplations, where we face each other’s longings and fears and translate them into dreamlike stories. The Dream Vehicle is a collective name for the various vehicles that play a role in the […]

Something that haunted us a bit in the early days of the project, was how to find a book publisher or even how to self-publish once we finished the book. We always believed that we had to take care of the imagery and lyrics first, before we could even consider a next step. Our photographic language grew and with every mile through the Benelux we got more familiar with our actual purpose. We are enormously happy and proud to announce that after we got the attention of managing […]

After some great meetings with Dutch documentary photographer Jeroen Toirkens last year on how to manage the process of making a photobook, we arrived at a new stage in our journey. While we kept on shooting and writing, we pursued a search for the right designer to come on board with us to design the book. We’re pleased to let you know that The Dream Vehicle photobook will be designed by acclaimed Dutch designer Sybren Kuiper, with whom we sat down last Christmas […]

In the winter of 2021, Anna was selected to participate in the Annual Photo Biennale of Gallery FotoNostrum in Barcelona.    After visiting the grand opening, she was also invited for an in-depth interview and presentation in the International FotoNostrum Magazine #22, which shows an artfully designed intersection of contemporary photography from internationally acclaimed image makers.   Along the 14 pages of content on Anna’s photo career, motives and working process, room was reserved to highlight The Dream Vehicle as her […]

A sign of the times? Again? The nude image, rising in fine arts. Is it censored? Do we have to look at nude images? What is the motive to show naked bodies in fine arts? As people ask us, why we would pose in the nude for our photography, we feel that when you want to perform something creative, something to express feelings, it’s very natural to turn to your own body. To know its force. As without clothing you […]

From November 26 until December 24, WM Gallery in Amsterdam presents a group exhibition titled ‘Searching for the Soul of the Service Station’. The exhibition looks at Service-Stations highlighting their different aspects, past, present and (uncertain?) future, through a collection of photos and paintings mainly from the WM Gallery’s private collection. ‘A cocktail of nostalgia, history, aesthetics, romanticism, social aspects, business, realism, and a pinch of humour.’ WitkowskaVerbunt will be participating with an image, shot during one of the The […]

‘In an essayistic way of photographing, photographing is part of the research process’, writes journalist and photocoach Diana Bokje in her freshly launched education book ‘Van Maken Tot Raken‘. ‘You have a certain idea about your subject in advance and you form your opinion about it while shooting. It is also a way of seeking confirmation. Of your world view; testing your reality against that of others (…)’. In ‘Van Maken Tot Raken’, Diana takes the reader through a series […]

‘De liefde blijft een magisch mysterie en iedereen kan daar een eigen draai aan geven. De vragen zijn universeel, de antwoorden persoonlijk.’   Creative director Robert Theunissen shone a wonderful light on our journey ‘The Dream Vehicle’ in his in-depth interview, published on VéloVolant. Read it here (in Dutch)

A few years back, Rob saw a self-portrait of me and in his head, the thought of possible collaboration was born. A sudden recognition of similar emotion and atmosphere in my photography made him curious and lit. “As if there was someone doing exactly the same thing, but in a female form” he recalled. As I love creative collaboration and mirroring ideas, I jumped into his idea of collaborating with no hesitation. With no expectation and no specific subject at […]

This month, June 2021, we are heading South, to the Belgian-French border, to start our anticipated documentary on The Dream Vehicle. As we started out photographing for the project on the brink of 2019, shedding light on personal topics about our time and place in the world, about loss and the human drive, we kept on deepening our concept and looked into additional ways of communicating the story. So, after we started to combine poetry and prose with our photographic […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HL_nH2IjkQ Somewhere in a small village on the border between Belgium and The Netherlands we ended up in a narrow tunnel. When we posed for a photograph in that tunnel and reviewed it, we saw two human bullets standing in the barrel of a rifle. This made us write a poem dedicated to our project, saying: ‘We stand in the barrel of a rifle. Ready to scatter two lonesome hearts in one shot. Pull the trigger my dear, that we […]

  In The Dream Vehicle we foremost investigate our subject matter with the cameras. Our thoughts on how we want to communicate to our viewers, our cravings for atmospheres that lets us feel that hearty existential punch in the stomach, all comes down to effective imagery.   But does that cover the whole process of getting the story across? As our photographic outcome is poetic in its creation, it instigates many matters to philosophize about, to undergo emotional feelings. Still […]

This month we sent out our first The Dream Vehicle newsletter. In addition to our Instagram account and website, we’d love you to get aboard more and more on the conceptual side of our journey. Because we have a beautiful story to tell you, harvested from a sun and snow beaten road trip: A story of challenges, of sweet and bitter love. Adventures from the road, from the heart, touching the very core of what we call romanticism. Seasoning the […]

  A returning anekdote in the story of our collaboration as Witkowska Verbunt, must be this opening line: That as I came across a portrait of a graduate at The Academy of Photography in Amsterdam, it was as if I was looking at the work of a female version of myself. So I learnt about the existence of Anna Witkowska. I recalled this to her later at an exhibition were we first met.   Despite interest to see if we […]

While photographing and writing for The Dream Vehicle home and abroad since 2019, we felt all this work, our poems as we relate to them often, should be gathered in a book. Our own paper telling of a years long theatrical performance. A story of human effort to sustain, with and without love, together alone, onto adventure. To pull the idea from our heads and start the actual process of making the book, we were in the fine position to […]

As the ice creaks and the white sun burns a hole through the firmament, we are delighted to bring you a good tiding. Today, on Valentines day 2021, we launch our personal project website of The Dream Vehicle: www.thedreamvehicle.com. Next to the trip and our Instagram, this website will be our weekly updated domain of storytelling. And a preparation towards our book. It has been two years since we took off on our quest. The road trip through Benelux with our […]

As winter dreams of 2020 slip into the past, new ones appear. As the heavens powder our heads with fresh snow, we feel one with you. So from the forest where we played today, we like to say: Health and joy for the new year. We realize life is a huge challenge, and responsibility, practically a collection of swords sticking right in your heart from day one. At the same time, it is all a dream. And in dreams there […]

Online publication of The Dream Vehicle by photography platform Photo31: “Photo31 takes you on a virtual journey. Four weeks on the road!  This week’s editor’s pick is long-term project ‘The Dream Vehicle’ by the photography duo Witkowska Verbunt. Which shows that not all cinematic and romantic road trips take place in the USA. With a classic Volvo car, Anna  and Rob started a journey through the Benelux in 2018. To photographically investigate the adult male-female relationship. The journey they undertake […]

Publication of The Dream Vehicle on the website of Academy of Photography in Amsterdam. Read it here (Dutch) or below (English) “We stand in the barrel of a rifle. Ready to scatter two lonesome hearts in one shot. Pull the trigger my dear, that we may never gather the pieces again.” In The Dream Vehicle, artist duo Witkowska Verbunt embark on a journey through the Benelux with a newly purchased car. Their plan to launch a photographic quest into a […]

After looking for a rental car to start our project on the road , we overnight decided to buy a classic Volvo car that someone was selling online. Traveling to the German border, to check out the ’96 Volvo 850 sedan at the owner’s property, it was an immediate match. Soon after the purchase, the car got its own name: ‘Jade’, after the deep, metallic green coating. Jade starts to play a key role in the project. Not only because […]

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 […]