After making the first pictures with his brand new Konica on his 10th birthday on a building site, the combination of design and photography remained a leading theme in the work of Daan Roggeveen. During high school he discovered the potential of photography, and developed his design skills in designing décors for theatre plays.
He decided to study architecture at the Delft University of Technology and left photography for a few years, but came back to the love of his youth after graduating on a project combining a gas station with a streetwalker’s district.
Daan Roggeveen’s photographic work emphasizes on the contemporary city and its development. He emphasises on divergent topics, from parking garages in suburbia to real estate advertisements in Ukraine. Most of all the ordinary, and his astonishment about it, is his main theme. Lack of planning and roughness are returning elements in the pictures. He moreover has a special fascination for infrastructure and the banal – maybe due to his final project on university.
A journey to Asia led to his first exhibition, focussing on the urban development in Chinese mega cities. The work was exposed in Haarlem, The Hague, and in W139 Basement, a gallery for promising young artists in the Amsterdam Post CS building.
In 2007, the combination of pictures from Ukraine, Belgium and L.A. lead to the project with the title
‘No People’. Behind the coincidental combination of the two countries and the mega city, appears to be a relation of placeless ness, banality, and roughness turning into beauty. The exposition was on show in Gallery Canvas, a beautiful venue on top of the former
Volkskrantgebouw, Amsterdam.
The last years, Daan did several photo series, amongst others for
MonU Magazine.
Daan lives and works in Shanghai, P.R.C.
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