Stand 76 op de Kunst RAI 2024 van 27 maart t/m 1 april
  • Willem Bakhuys Roozeboom

Willem Bakhuys Roozeboom lived and worked in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, Africa. A live in one of the last pristine and untouched natural areas without a phone or the internet, with only the locals and the wildlife surrounding him. Overwhelmed by the African landscape and it's wildlife, he started his photography carreer

During his 10 years stay in the wild, he got to know his subjects. He learned to read the signs, like the warning ‘head shake’ of an elephant. He recognized a leopard’s ideal ambush tree and he became a specialist in deducting which termite mount a cheetah will choose as a vantage point.

Necesarry knowledge to survive and get the most interesting shots. 

"African wildlife is as it should be, sweet and clean, stripped of all trivia, haste and greed. There is still space and distance in full measure and everything seems to come in an extensive form. The roads are longer, the sky feels higher, the moon looks closer, the sun warmer, the storms stronger and the views are all ‘projected’ in high definition. It’s nature in an extra large size. Its power to make you gasp is never far away. I love those dark clouds coming in, filled with rain and thunder, ready to burst down on you without any pity whatsoever. That clear and bright light before it starts and the smell of the earth even before the first raindrop hits the ground. It looks, feels and sounds like you’ve travelled back in time to become a participant in an ancient story with no beginning and no end. To be able to walk around in that scenery is like you’ve been invited to the biggest virtual reality world ever created. Round and round it goes, from golden dawn to blood-red sunset, and in between, nothing but the wind in the grass, the roar of the lion, the rumbling of elephants and the endless wanderings of the wild herds as they follow showers across this vast, dusty continent. Oooh, I do love this place".