In his new series Anonymous Contacts Dutch photographer Maarten van Schaik combines new photographic works with images from his archives. 

“Being a photographer for over twenty years I started to question myself about the common ground in my series and projects. I wanted to reinvent myself and ask myself questions about my own work; what am I really looking for in a single image as well as in my photographic work as a whole?

Plowing through hundreds of contact-sheets and negatives and in the same period shooting vast bodies of new work, it became clear to me that I've always been fascinated by a sense of anonymity and loneliness in my photography. I am moving through the world, hoping for anonymity, hoping I am able to humble myself enough to see and record what the rest of us, preoccupied with our hectic everyday lives won't see. As is the case in almost all of my work, I am not interested in pure registration or a factual approach of the things I am photographing. The objects and subjects which I photograph remain veiled. They are part of a world in which the distinction between dream and reality is not stable; time has become diffuse.

The colours I use in the series are adding to the feeling of alienation and solitude I want to convey. They are vibrant but have a faded and estranged look to them which lead the viewer in to an alternate reality; an outlandish world beneath the surface of the real world. There is a story in these photographs, but the viewer has to find it for himself. I want to create work that is open to different ideas and interpretations and refrain myself from imposing a distinct narrative to the observer. In the end there is personal meaning to be found."

Courtesy of Foam