XF33mm F1.4 - Carl

My original idea for the project with the new Fujinon 33mm F1.4 was to shoot portraits of old friends, people who have left a mark on my life but that I don’t see very often. Due to a tight deadline, I couldn’t photograph as much people as I wanted but maybe I’ll just continue the series when opportunities arise.

This is Carl, a man who had a big impact on who I am. I have only seen him a couple of times in the last 25 years and it was the act of taking his portrait that made me understand how big his impact actually was.

Carl was the brain behind an organisation that ran youth camps with a twist. The idea was simple: what if we bring a bunch of young people between 16 and 26 years old together on a campsite on a Mediterranean island and let them build a mini society? No rules to start with, let them figure it out themselves. I hear every kid say: “hell yeah!” and every responsible parent think: “now that’s a recipe for disaster” and as usual the parents are right. We had fights, food poisoning, crashed cars, morning after pills, confrontations with the police, alcohol intoxications and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But we also had a chance to learn, step up, organise, develop people skills and build friendships that are still strong after 25 years. Every single day, I use skills that I have learned on the beaches of Spain, Crete and Cyprus.

I first joined one of these camps as a participant and returned the next 4 years as one of the organisers. Carl and I disagreed on more than one occasion but always kept a deep mutual respect. Unfortunately external factors collided with bad timing and a changing society. This was the demise of the organisation. Most of us were in our early twenties with so much new things to discover and didn’t fully appreciate what Carl’s life’s work had brought us.

In hindsight, being around the same age as Carl was back then, I can see that we didn’t support him as we should have. To Carl’s credit, I don’t believe he ever held it against us.

Carl, thanks for what you did for me and so many others back in the 90s. Some would say you paid a price for your ideals, but let me assure you that you’ve invested that into a bunch of crazy young people. And thanks for agreeing to sit in front of my camera and have such a great chat that we had to scramble in the last light to actually make that portrait.