Re: Roll call

["captyng" <captyng@vtx.ch>]

At 11:28 AM 29/10/1997 -0800, you wrote:
>Alastair Firkin wrote:
> I've been thinking that it is time to have a roll call. We have not had one
> for over a year or so. I'll start the ball rolling
>

Gerard Captijn

Gerard Captijn, born 1945, married with 2 children: Sebastien and Mathilde.
I grew up in Heemstede, the Netherlands, and studied economy and business
management at Erasmus University in Rotterdam and Columbia University in
New York. I also studied graphic arts at the AGS and did a course on 18th
century art at the University of Amsterdam. I wrote a dissertation about
the history of photography.

I am of Dutch nationality, profession: independant asset manager/investment
banker and live in Geneva, Switzerland since 1977. Former positions:
Controller Switzerland and Vice President of Citibank/Citicorp, Head of
Administration, Systems and Personnel of the European Broadcasting Union
(Eurovision) and Credit Manager Europe for Digital Equipment.

I started photography when I was 13 years old and bought my first serious
camera, a Hasselblad 500C, at the age of 16. Zeiss 50/80/150 and 250 glass.
I had a black-and-white darkroom at the time and was very much in Tri-X
available light photography (jazz concerts with musicians like Coltrane,
Davis, Monk, etc.) and the Amsterdam art scene (happenings, exhibitions,
vernissages, etc.). During my student days I worked in a B&W laboratory in
Amsterdam and in a color laboratory in Gothenburg, Sweden, to make some
money. I still developed E-3 film and enlarged unmasked color negatives
without electronic gizmo support for exposure and filtering.

I changed the Hasselblad equipment later for Nikons to make more authentic,
closer-to-life pictures. The Hasselblad was just too slow and too bulky.  I
still have an F3 with 17mm/24mm/50mm/105mm and 80-200mm glass which is
gathering dust since I bought a Leica M6 10 years ago. Should be sold one
day (the Nikon-, not the Leica gear!). I have an 21mm 2,8 Elmarit, 35mm
Summilux ASPH, 35mm Summicron (last spherical version), 50mm collapsible
Summicron, 50mm Elmar (new) and the actual 90mm 2,8 Elmarit. 

During 1973 - 1974 I drove a VW bus from New York to La Paz and travelled
the following years in Europe, the US, South America and South-East Asia.
The bulk of my photography is on Kodachrome film and travel related. Right
now, I am preparing a trip to Laos for January 1998. Favorite
photographers: Salgado, Hausser, Frank, Avedon, Webb, Rodchenko, Arbus and
Winogrand. I also paint (somewhat in the style of Francis Bacon) and I am
getting more and more interested in 20th century music (Schoenberg, Eisler,
Webern, Berg, Cage, etc.).

What I am finally most interested in is the interaction of the image and
our emotions. Specifically, how can the photographer or painter maximize
the impact of his images?