ABOUT
ROBERT VAN KOESVELD
Prior to his photography career, Robert van Koesveld was a psychotherapist and educator for many years – and this influences his creative process as a photographer. Robert strives for a synergy between his observations, his feelings and his camera-use, so that his images create a palpable, emotional engagement between subject and viewer. He has been photographing full-time for over fifteen years.
Although born in Australia, Robert ‘inherited’ an international perspective from his Java-Dutch parents who had lived in many countries. His father spoke nine languages including Japanese, having learnt it working in Japan in 1917. Robert’s family home regularly had visitors from Japan and other countries; Japanese craft was an early influence. He travelled extensively as a young man and returned to travel when his children grew up.
Robert van Koesveld’s exhibition work focuses on the qualities of presence, space, timelessness, and the liminal world located between the personal & archetypal, and the day-to-day & the sacred…
He collaborated with Japanese Tea-Master Takako Morita in creating an exhibition work in KG+ (the international Kyotographie festival) titled ‘Tea – Mind’. This experiential work paralleled the experience of haiken (拝見) the ‘close viewing’ that follows drinking a bowl of tea. Guests were invited to sit in one of five private spaces, and to quietly engage with the images presented in a tomobako (共箱 ‘closed box’).
Robert’s solo exhibition, ‘Seeing Geiko’, was exhibited at The Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai. The title referred to the need to see other cultures openly, rather than through the lens of one’s own culture. Some of that work was previously in an experienced-based solo exhibition in Kyoto – ‘Seeing Geiko’.
His photo book ‘Geiko and Maiko of Kyoto’ (distributed by Penguin) won the Australian Institute of Professional Photographer’s Award 2015 for the Best Photo Book of the Year. His previous photo-book, (co-authored with his wife Libby Lloyd), was ‘Bhutan Heartland: Travels in the Land of the Thunder Dragon’ (published by Fremantle Press). Robert enjoys working in the picture essay form and has contributed a number of these to Kyoto Journal.
His current long-term projects explore place and space in Bhutan, India, Japan and Australia — and investigate the possibilities of different art forms that invite the viewer into a kind of visual theatre. He is interested in seeing the landscape in terms of a tapestry of place that floats in time – as well as memory, vulnerability and loss. He also has portrait-based projects and has an ongoing interest in alternative printing processes and small-edition bookmaking and design.
Robert has led photography tours for many years. In the tours he works with long term collaborators in Japan, India and Bhutan who combine deep local knowledge and extensive relationships with an understanding of photography. The tours are small group oriented to ensure individual coaching is always available and that there is flexibility to respond to creative opportunities.
He has provided coaching and supervision, and developed and taught training programmes in this area as a psychotherapist. As a photographer he provides one-to-one developmental coaching to photographers at all levels.
Short Artists Statement
An Australian photographer / psychotherapist, Robert van Koesveld’s exhibition work focuses on the qualities of presence, timelessness and the liminal world located between past and present; personal and archetypal; day-to-day and sacred.