Although I love black and white photography - creating dark and brooding images, expressing a bleak look into the void, a primal fear and melancholy - I often use colours in my photography as to emphases the absurd, the surreal I am looking for.

My themes are: portraits of windows, portraits of people, street photography, abstracts and conceptual photography.

The Italian city Ferrara is important theme. The photographs I took over there are based on the novels of the Italian author Giorgio Bassani (1916-2000). He tells a melancholic story about exclusion, isolation, closed doors, desolation, loneliness, existential fears. I worked for seven years on this project and has been published under the title “The Ferrara Streetbook. A walk in the footsteps of Giorgio Bassani”.

I also completed a photo book about war graves of the Great War in Belgium and Northern France. I hope it will soon be published.
Like the Ferrara images, they are all in black and white.

My colour photography style is influenced by the compositions of Mondriaan.
Since 2008 I had various exhibitions and won some prizes in an international photo contest. Besides working in my home town, The Hague, Amsterdam and other Dutch cities, I worked in Poland, Israel, Norway, Italy, Belgium, Romania, France, Norway and Berlin.
I was born and raised in Vlaardingen - near Rotterdam - but since many years I am living in Leiden - not far from Amsterdam and near the coast.

My work is to been seen at:

giarasphotoblog.blogspot.nl/
www. susannestoop.nl