One Year

In a very short space of time, Geert Broertjes lost the three most important women in his life: his aunt, grandmother and mother passed away. He shared his grief with his girlfriend, who became a recurring theme in this series. But even this relationship ended, a couple of months after his mother died. Geerts faith in life had gone, he sank to the bottom of his existence. He started having many short-lived relationships, using alcohol and drugs, all to forget. Slowly though, he was able to climb back up and regain control. Broertjes photographed the process instinctively. It was only afterwards that he noticed the coherence of his work. It became a poetic story about love, loss and grief. The beautiful photographs, all shot analogue in raw black and white, reveal the dark feelings he experienced during this intense period in his life. Geert Broertjes graduated in 2013 at the Fotoacademie Amsterdam. He is fascinated by what people motivates, which choices in life they make, and why. Broertjes works with analogue cameras and makes both high end digital prints and superb silver gelatins. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam. During the final stage of making this book, his father was for the third time diagnosed with cancer and was hospitalized. Geert hardly was able to swallow the news when an ambulance had to bring him rapidly to the same hospital his father was in. He was diagnosed with cancer too, in its hereditary form. His treatment was ongoing while this book was printed. “I reflect on what illness and death can bring me and not so much about what they can take from me. This thought has brought me feelings of calm and strength that I never felt before. I know now what it’s like to lose a loved one, what it’s like when a loved one is ill, and what it’s like to be ill myself.”