Noctambule
Bart Koetsier
Edit, design & essay by Erik Vroons
Uitgeverij Lecturis - 2023
Bart Koetsier roamed Europe for a decade, driven by a dark romantic longing for the big city 'after closing time'. Drawn to the seamy side of a smoothed-out culture, he got lost in the anarchic nighttime street life, photographing the grubby, unpolished and unbridled scenes that unfolded before his eyes. Koetsier has witnessed and documented it all without wanting to participate. Free of judgment, he recorded how the bourgeoisie transforms into a more animalistic form of itself and how the intoxication of the nightlife mixes with the perfume of the streets.
'Noctambule' is a compression of an elongated experience, of disappearing into the night; a blurry period in which Koetsier deliberately surrendered himself for ten years to anonymity, to situations over which no one seemed to really have control. In this book, that was launched during Paris Photo in November 2023, the viewer is drawn into the obscure allure of the bohemian 'wonderland' that only looms between dusk and dawn.
De kracht van kwetsbaarheid
The power of vulnerability
Arnon Grunberg & Bart Koetsier
Uitgeverij Nijgh & Van Ditmar, Amsterdam - 2022
This project is a powerful message through art, which makes you think and invites you to pause, look and listen to a personal vision of psychological frailty and then discuss it with others.
A book and an exhibition consisting of 22 black and white portraits of psychiatric patients, mental health professionals, researchers, relatives of patients and other people closely involved in mental health care. The portraits were made by Bart Koetsier. MRI scans are shown next to the portraits, to show the contrast between the search for abnormal brain structures and the individual story that a portrait photo tells. In the interviews with the people portrayed, we show vulnerability and strength, without mentioning a name or function. The interviews were conducted by Arnon Grunberg. The portraits, stories and MRIs are bundled in this booklet.
Met Parijse pen
Literary Wanderings in Paris
Margot Dijkgraaf & Bart Koetsier
Boom Uitgevers Amsterdam - 2020
In the book Met Parijse pen (With a Parisian pen) photographer Bart Koetsier’s eye meets with Margot Dijkgraaf’s literary gaze on Paris.
Dijkgraaf and Koetsier unveil Paris under a new dawn, following the footsteps of famous writers: Patrick Modiano takes you to another Montmartre, Remco Campert shows you the east of the city, Michel Houellebecq takes you on a tour from the tall buildings of the 13th arrondisement to the Sorbonne, and Adriaan van Dis takes you to the backstage of the immigration system.
Paris, a city of luxury and beauty, but also of extreme poverty. A place to wander, to get lost and find places we didn’t even know we were longing for. Beneath the magnificent surface, behind the luminous facade, the city breathes with life, it smells and flourishes.
Margot Dijkgraaf's pen highlights ten seminal Dutch and French writers, following their characters in Paris. Bart Koetsier's photos uniquely follow their literary route through the city of light.
