Aangifte moet vertaald. Fundraisertje!

Gecensureerde versie. ‘This post goes against our standards on nudity and sexual activity.’

Uit de talloze reacties op mijn aangifte tegen Facebook blijkt dat dit onderwerp enorm leeft. Mensen zijn het zat dat computers voor ons bepalen wat we wel en niet mogen. Dat Facebook aan de buitenkant belangstelling voor het individu veinst ('Waar denk je aan?' 'Hoe was deze ervaring?') terwijl het zielloze algoritme stilletjes over onze vrijheid en onze manier van leven walst. De menselijke maat is zoek.

Het verhaal werd breed uitgemeten in de Nederlandse media. Maar inhoudelijk overschrijdt het onderwerp natuurlijk onze landsgrenzen; de hele wereld loopt hier tegenaan. Daarom is het belangrijk dat de aangifte (lees 'm hier) vertaald wordt naar het Engels, zodat ook andere media mee kunnen lezen. Omdat het een juridisch document is, luistert die vertaling nauw. Het vertaalcentrum van de VU kan deze klus klaren voor 550 euro. O nee, 525. Want ik heb net zelf alvast 25 ingelegd.

Dus. Help je mee? Via Tikkie. Standaard staat 15 euro ingevuld; dat bedrag kun je zelf wijzigen:

DONEER NU*

UPDATE 16 AUGUSTUS 13:12 GEHAALD ER IS NU 560 EURO BINNENGEKOMEN. IK HEB ZOJUIST DE LINK NAAR HET TIKKIE VERWIJDERD EN HET VERTAALBUREAU DE OPDRACHT GEGEVEN.

SUPER BEDANKT ALLEMAAL!!



Ik zie een kind. Facebook ziet porno. Ik doe aangifte.

Ik heb vandaag bij de hoofdofficier van justitie in het arrondissement Amsterdam aangifte gedaan tegen Facebook Benelux. Ik heb het OM gevraagd een onderzoek in te stellen naar het fotobeleid van Facebook en zo nodig strafvervolging tegen het bedrijf in te stellen. Het is naar alle waarschijnlijkheid de eerste keer dat dit in een dergelijke zaak in Nederland gebeurt.

Jong meisje met wat zojuist geraapte maripanoten. Isabo. 2011 Uit: ‘Au!’

De afgelopen maanden heeft Facebook drie keer een foto van mijn account verwijderd; mijn account werd tot twee keer toe geblokkeerd. In alle gevallen ging het om beelden waarop (ook) vrouwen en/of meisjes met ontbloot bovenlijf stonden. Na publicatie van de foto hiernaast werd mijn account een week geblokkeerd.

Het door Facebook gehanteerde beleid is volgens mij strijdig met (onder meer) de Nederlandse Grondwet, en wel met het discriminatieverbod (artikel 1) en het recht op vrije meningsuiting (artikel 7).

Facebook discrimineert vrouwen in het algemeen door foto's waarop borsten (of zelfs maar het bovenlijf van een jong meisje) te zien zijn te verwijderen met als argument dat deze beelden 'naaktheid' en/of 'sexuele activiteit' tonen. Facebook discrimineert vrouwen van de Namibische Himba-stam in het bijzonder, doordat deze vrouwen traditioneel altijd met ontbloot bovenlijf lopen, zodat het beleid van Facebook de facto betekent dat (afbeeldingen van) deze vrouwen de gebruikers van Facebook niet kunnen bereiken. Facebook seksualiseert jonge kinderen door foto's van ze te verwijderen met een beroep op ‘aanstootgevende inhoud’ en ‘naaktheid en pornografie’. En Facebook dwingt mij een onrechtmatige inperking van het recht op vrije meningsuiting te dulden onder bedreiging van steeds zwaardere sancties.

Ik licht in de aangifte ook toe hoe een platform als Facebook de rest van de wereld langzaam maar zeker dwingt in een Amerikaans en puriteinse blik op de wereld om ons heen, ook al is dit benauwde keurslijf uitdrukkelijk strijdig met wat Facebook en diens oprichter en CEO Mark Zuckerberg hierover zelf altijd hebben verklaard. Zuckerberg zelf schreef bijvoorbeeld kort na de aanslag op Charlie Hebdo in januari 2015 nog dat Facebook 'nooit een land of een groep mensen laat dicteren wat mensen over de gehele wereld met elkaar kunnen delen'.

De hele aangifte staat hier in PDF.

Heslenfeld-Facebook 2.PNG


The end of the game

You know the feeling? You hear a song for the first time in your life and it hits you so hard that tears start rolling before you know it. I've experienced it 3 or 4 times in my life. It happened to me when I heard the best love song ever: First time ever I saw your face from Roberta Flack.

Earlier this week I experienced something similar for the first time with a book. A friend gave it to me: The end of the game by Peter Beard - fourth print, 1988. When I held it in my hands, I immediately realized that this was something special. But it was only when I really took the time for it that it hit me.

And just a few pages was all it took. The photo of the elephant fetus I had seen before. But once again it touched me deeply – what a spectacular, divine image. Only seconds later I opened a spread, imaging 1,000 elephants on 1 photo. I did not know that it ever existed.

And so it goes on. Diary fragments interspersed with black and white images from the bush, presented in a way I never saw before. Hard, unfiltered. I see hunters, lions, vultures, danger, death and decay, heroism, beauty. The destruction of a world so magnificent and extraordinary – in a book so beautifully designed, like a great piece of music - perfection in print. And then the grand finale: 20 pages stuffed with aerial images of dead elephant: hundreds, in an endless series that can not leave anybody untouched.

The end of the game was first published in 1965, my birth year. Already then there were people that realised the white invasion of Africa meant destruction on such a massive scale that it was doubtful whether this could ever be stopped. That was then. Now we are more than 50 years ahead and the prospects are even more gloomy..

The content of the book touches me even more because I have experienced all this beauty myself – I still do every year during my expeditions in Namibia. With every elephant, lion or rhino that I encounter in the wild (I’m not talking national parks, game parks or whatever) I feel how vulnerable and fragile their lives are. That the fate of each and every one of these animals is seriously threatened. And that I might very well be one of the last human beings to experience something spectacular  as this.

This book made me realize what I already knew, but just don’t want to know. And that is that the fight for conservation is a battle most probably already lost long ago.

The end of the game.

What a gift ..... thank you Mike Muizebelt!

No school, no clinic. No wifi. No smoothies, no McDonalds. No Superdry. And no Playstation. Shouldn't these kids be crying?

Better images in 5 minutes

Why do my holiday images look so boring compared to what I felt myself when I took them? How do you ask permission to take somebody's portrait? How can I make my landscapes more vivid? 

Typical questions I get from people during my lectures and workshops. And interesting enough you can improve your images very easily by simply sticking to 4 ot 5 simple rules. Avoid the sun, especially if taking close-ups, for example. And try to avoid the horizon in the middle of your image.

Dutch magazine Z!n publisehd a 6 page feature in which I tackle some of these common questions, plus their easy solutions. Here it is (in Dutch).

All alone on a deserted island

That's the mission. Next week I'll be on my own on an unihabited island. Not in the Pacific or the South-China Sea, but in the good old Dutch Waddenzee. The name of the island is Griend, and it is a very well protected nature reserve, that only receives a handful of scientists every year.

Griend is not big, maybe 1200 metres long. There is one simple hut, for the scientists and birdwatchers. And it is home to tens of thousands of birds, summer and winter.

Here I'll spend a week all alone. Without any contact with the outside world. No phone, no radio. No Facebook, no Twitter, not even a watch. All this for a couple of features in Dutch magazines. But the real reason of course is that I simply like to do things like this.

I have experienced loneliness like this many times before, especially in the Australian outback and in the Namibian desert. That's why I do not expect any big events happening, like huge new insights, or feeling teribbly lonely.

Then again, you never know.

For Dutch natives: here's an interview I had this week on BNR national radio about my trip to Griend.

 

PS April 29th here's the feature that Dutch newspaper Volkskrant published on this journey. It's in Dutch I'm afraid.

 

Naamloos-17.jpg


There is a connection here

Only one more week and my new photo book 'Empty' will be out. For this project I travelled the remotest corners of Namibia for 6 months. And there, visitors from Holland would jump on board to join me for a week or sometimes two.

All in all I had 16 people coming over to experience what it's like to be completely on your own in the African bush, in a world run by Mother Nature, not by humans. None of them had ever experienced this before. Some of them had never been to Africa.

I asked the people that joined me to write something about their trip, and 10 of their stories are included in 'Empty'. This one, from Marc Knip, struck me as particularly strong and powerful, because Marc is so open about his uncomfortable start.

I feel he touches the very essence of what it's like to travel like this.

Hope

Only a week ago I returned from Jordan, where I was together with reporter Rinke Verkerk to document the lives of Syrian refugees in an area close to the Jordan-Syria border. Last year we'd been to the same place, and boy, it was a sad mission then. The people were angry and the war was everywhere. Little children in Al Za'atari refugee camp were throwing stones at us. If we only mentioned the possibility that the refugees might have to stay in Jordan longer than a few weeks, people immediately got mad at us. It was almost impossible to find a trace of positive energy then.

Now, only a year later, I was taken by surprise when I returned. The war is still there, and so are all the trauma's, the pain and the tears. But amidst all that I sensed something else: hope.

It was everywhere. The kids were going to school and didn't have time to throw stones at us any more. Birds were singing in the air. People have started to grow crops in tiny little gardens just in front of their tent or caravan. Whenever I had a coffee or a shisha in one of the little cafe's in Za' atari people would refuse my payment, showing me hospitality in a way that touched me deeply.

Last year I thought Al Za'atari was a miserable place. Now I still think it is, but I've felt it is also a center of hope, and a monument to the power of love. And I have a deep respect for people that lost almost everything and still have the strength to go on.

Want to see the images? Here they are.

Dead line

Today is monday, the rain is falling outside and I find myself on the floor again, a few hundred images scattered around me. Should I skip this one? What's the story behind that one and could it be that the other one is more powerful? May be this one, if combined with.... Or..

For my new book 'Empty' I spent six months in the desert in Namibia, drove something like 25.000 kilometres and took a few thousand images. And now I am compressing all that into 128 pages...

Producing a photo book is never easy. This is the fifth book I am making and although I am beginning to recognize the different stages in this creative process, I can't seem to get them under control. And I probably shouldn't even try.

Making a photo book is a time and energy consuming thing. I do feel how the chaos is slowly but surely heading towards one goal, towards order and something that makes sense, both in txt and photographs. And with only a week left to the deadline, that is a comforting thought!

Last week I sat down with designer Tiemen Harder from Koningharder in Utrecht and he showed me the first real results. So here's a few spreads that will definitely make it into the book. I think.


The smile detector

I love taking portraits, but I if there’s anything I really detest, it’s images of people with a fake smile. In my opinion the ‘say cheese’ thing has become so normal these days, that we are having more and more trouble distinguishing between a genuine smile and a fake one. There are even camera's and apps on the market with smile detectors. They will only take a shot if everybody in the frame is smiling. 'This will result in hilarious moments and pictures with friends and family.'

Just how pathetic and sad is that? How can an image of anyone be good if he’s pretending to be something that he’s not?

To me images of people are so much more powerful when they give us an insight in what’s really going on. Whether happy, scared, mad, sad or full of joy – I consider it a privilege that people give me the opportunity to have a look, or a glimpse at least, into their soul. And in my opinion I would completely destroy that precious moment with the words ‘say cheese!’

I guess if you have a look at some of my portraits you'll get the picture. This shot one is just an example. While sailing along some of the most Eastern islands of the Indonesian archipelago we visited one of the tiny little villages dotted along the coast. This man was smoking a cigarette and chatting with a few other guys - just like old men do anywhere. His blue eyes really struck me (it turned out he suffered badly from glaucoma).

Can you imagine what this portrait would have looked like if I had told him to smile just before releasing the shutter?

Indonesia2012-0159-thijsheslenfeldb.jpg

Portraits: a little confidence helps

Most people like pictures of people. But the general perception is that most people don’t want their picture being taken. The result is that many photographers start shooting snapshots, without their objects’ consent or knowledge. Although this can work out fine every now and then, in my opinion this approach usually ends up with bad results. I’m talking about the messy images from crowded markets, with tilted horizons and all sorts of crap in the foreground. And even worse, when people discover what’s happening, there is a good chance that they will be angry.

In my experience, most people don’t mind having their picture taken at all, many of them actually like it! I think it all comes down to the way you ask. If people feel that you have a genuine interest in them, the chance that they refuse is very small (and if they do so – that’s not terrible either).

It does help if people can see (and feel) that you know what you’re doing. That’s why it may be a good idea to adjust all your settings (shutter, aperture) before you start the conversation. Even more so if the light conditions are challenging, as was the case in the image below. I took the shot in a small shop in NW Namibia. While I bought some groceries I noticed the man and his grandson, sitting next to the entrance. I chatted a little with them, grabbed a camera from the car, took a few images of the shop to get the exact settings I'd need and then took this shot in only 10 or 20 seconds.

namibia2013-5161-thijsheslenfeldA.jpg