The neighbour, his ex and the owner of the laundrette Amsterdam Maarten Tromp Street Photography

The neighbour, his ex and the owner of the laundrette
Images from the Indische Buurt, Amsterdam

'An unbearable situation escalates with death', screams a headline in de Volkskrant one morning in september 2006. And furthermore: 'Growing unrest in the Indische Buurt in Amsterdam after a deadly knifing. According to the residents, the neighbourhood is controlled by scum fighting over drug dealing territories'. Printed media and TV, pouring superlatives, have ethnic groups pitched against each other while competing gangs are terrorising the community.

From my window I walk to the television and back. I ask myself if I am looking at the same neighbourhood that they are talking about.

For the past two and a half years, I have been taking photographs in the Indische Buurt in Amsterdam. With these photos, I reflect on the current, often biased formation and representation of images as in the media.
I wasn't searching for a story with a beginning and an end, but I was trying to capture the atmosphere that characterises the neighbourhood for me. A sequence of moods and emotions, alternating day and night. A neighbourhood built out of moments, places and encounters. We look and think in subconsious patterns and prejudices cloud our perception, passing what we already know - or do we?

Maarten Tromp (Amsterdam, 1980) works as an independent photographer and film maker, based in Amsterdam. In 2005 he graduated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the Hague, the Netherlands.

Maarten Tromp works both on autonomous projects and on commission.