New York and San Francisco might compete over the title of ‘most filmed city in the world’, for lovers of television series, Miami is the most recognisable city in the United States. In CSI Miami, Horatio Caine and his forensic team whizz over 8-lane highways from bloody crime scene to dreary suburb. Mass-murderer Dexter clarifies his methods to dispose of bodies against a background of pastel-coloured art-deco houses. And –more retro, but deeply embedded in the collective consciousness- in Miami Vice, Crockett and Tubs zoom by in their Ferrari, passing flashy office towers, or they take a speedboat, trailing off starch white beaches.

Distance and engagement – in Hans Wilschut’s photographs, these emotions cease to be each other’s opposites. Time and again, he seems to step back, deliberately removing himself from the scene, precisely in order to come closer, to pierce to the core, to see even more acutely. He avoids our gaze, emphatically refusing to take our perspective. He is the outsider who compels us to look again, who infuses the banal and deathly world with unanticipated new life. His work deliberately heightens the tension between the outsider’s perspective and his engagement with the world around him.

I am standing high above the water on the narrow footbridge of a crane. The blue railing could obviously use a coat of paint. There’s a bit of rubbish on the bridge but I am looking straight ahead, to the other side of the water. Night has just fallen and the lights in the harbour have come on. Bright work lights accentuate a red ship that is surrounded by a couple of large yellow cranes. The blue light coming from the business across from me is reflected in the Maas. To the right of it, two lights cast long green lines on the calm water. From the platform, I can see the harbour of Rotterdam in harsh, brightly coloured lights. The horizon shines, proof that work is still going on there. Here on this footbridge, in the dark and some 40 m up in the air, I feel the magic of this place.

Crazy metropolis, festering newly built edifices, non-descript building sites, endless fly-overs; the roller coaster of the world wide urban growth offers a tireless perspective for contemporary art photography. With the urban scenery in front of the camera lens, the sky is the limit, literally.

‘Let’s see where those shoes are at …’ Hans Wilschut sits in front of the big screen of his Apple computer. He shows a photograph of an apartment building in Johannesburg. It is a picture he shot after dusk. The lights are on in almost every apartment. Because of the division of the windows and different colours of light, the facade almost seems a stained window in a church. But if you continue to look, you see that the white concrete is covered in rusty patches. Some windowsills are broken, glass is closed off with lots of imagination and many curtains are crooked or only cover the window partly. It is clear that this apartment building does not stand in a fancy area of Johannesburg although the architecture resembles the modernistic edifices from the days of Le Corbusier. It makes the photograph more exciting because there is more to it than the mere registration of a type of building which is generally thought to be beautiful. This photograph shows how intensely this building is inhabited, without showing any people.

For those who are not aware of the current trends in contemporary photography, there are basically only two themes of which you should know: vulnerable adolescent girls and urban landscapes. These are the two most dominant topics in all of the art photography you see today.In order to broaden your knowledge, it is helpful to realise that portraying teen girls has fallen out of artistic favour in the meantime. Imitators of trendsetter Rineke Dijkstra have completely exhausted the subject.

Hans Wilschut’s work originates from the urban world. His photographs are lyric reflections on the increasingly built-up surroundings. An underlying social theme can often be found in his photographic work.

For Hans Wilschut looking is a critical undertaking. He cannot be simply labelled an observer.
He focuses on those elements that guide how we view the world. For many years now, light, colour and shadow have been the basis for his ‘photoworks’.