Bastiaan Woudt · 33 works
Karawan is Bastiaan Woudt's visual journey through Morocco. A body of work born from the tension between a photographer's controlled studio practice and the overwhelming sensory reality of an unfamiliar land. Portraits, landscapes, and still lifes merge into a single monochrome narrative about contrast, restraint, and the search for a personal visual language in foreign territory.
The project was made possible by the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation, which in 2016 awarded Woudt the annual prize given to a promising Dutch artist. The prize included an inspirational journey abroad, the creation of a new body of work, a publication, and a solo exhibition. For Woudt, the destination was clear from the start: Morocco.
The impulse to travel to Africa had been growing since 2014, when Woudt climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with his brothers for War Child. Despite the strict schedule that left little room to explore Tanzania, he was deeply moved by what he encountered: the people, the landscapes, the atmosphere, the mystique. Back in the Netherlands, he began making work inspired by what he had seen. The desire to return to Africa stayed with him.
When the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation asked where he wanted to go, Woudt did not hesitate. Morocco, for the diversity of its people, its landscapes, and its cultures. He deliberately chose to do as little research as possible beforehand, to arrive with the same blank state he brings to the studio. No preconceptions, no mood boards. Just the country, the camera, and himself.
The journey lasted two weeks, from 14 to 28 September 2016. Filmmaker Jelmar van Belle accompanied him to document the process. Their route traced a large circle through the country: Marrakech, El Jadida, Rabat, Meknes, Fez, Midelt, the Sahara at Merzouga, N'Kob, Taroudant, Essaouira, and back to Marrakech.
Marrakech was overwhelming. Woudt described it as "organised chaos," an "Arab Disneyland" of sound, colour, and movement. The Medina alone had over 9,600 streets. Something was happening on every square centimetre. While walking through it, he enjoyed the experience, but when it came to photography, he shut down completely. The chaos was incompatible with his way of working. He needed quiet, space, and a sense of security to create.
The coastal cities, El Jadida and Rabat, offered little photographically. Dry, flat, and uninspiring. It was in Fez that things began to shift, the labyrinthine medina providing visual richness on every corner. But the real breakthrough came later, in the countryside.
Driving through the hills outside the cities, where it was empty and nobody else was around, Woudt stopped near a herd of sheep with a shepherd. He stepped out of the car, asked if he could take a photograph. The shepherd stood proudly, hand on hip, posing naturally. At that moment, everything clicked. The peace of mind returned. No crowds, no pressure. Just the subject and the camera.
"For me personally, that was an affirmation," Woudt said in the documentary filmed during the trip. "I need peace, but also some feeling of security to be able to do that."
The Sahara presented a different challenge. The sand dunes had been photographed millions of times. Woudt was not interested in repeating that. He searched for movement instead of stillness: camels, people, traces of life in the vast emptiness.
Throughout the journey, photographing people on the street proved nearly impossible. Group pressure, religious sensitivities around portraiture, and a persistent sense of government surveillance made spontaneous portraits extremely difficult. At every riad, Woudt asked the owners if they knew anyone willing to sit for a portrait. When that worked, as with the girl who posed in a safe, quiet setting at one of the riads, the results were among his strongest images of the trip.
But the limitations of the journey became part of the work's identity. Recognising that his story was not yet complete, Woudt purchased traditional Moroccan clothing during the trip and, back in the Netherlands, cast models of Moroccan descent to photograph in his studio. The resulting studio portraits, including nudes and figures in traditional garb, completed the series on his own terms.
Karawan is not a travelogue. It is a meditation on what happens when a photographer leaves the controlled environment he has built for himself and confronts the unknown.
At its core, the project explores the tension between comfort and discomfort, between the studio and the street. Woudt is not a street photographer. He has never pretended to be. His strength lies in controlled situations: quiet settings, one subject, focused attention. Morocco tested that assumption relentlessly. The Medina overwhelmed him. The chaos of city life made him shut down. But in the countryside, in the empty hills, in the silence of the Sahara, his visual instincts returned.
The series is structured around three subjects that recur throughout Woudt's practice: portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. In Karawan, these three lines are woven together into a single narrative. A face full of character. A black vase against a wall. Dunes receding into haze. Each image is treated with the same graphic clarity, the same reduction to essence.
The choice for black and white was not aesthetic but conceptual. As Woudt explained: "With black-and-white photography, you remove a piece of reality. The image becomes timeless." Morocco, with its saturated colours and photogenic surfaces, could easily seduce a photographer into cliché. Monochrome strips that away. What remains is form, texture, light. The images become less about Morocco and more about seeing.
Woudt's visual signature, minimalism, graphic composition, strong contrast, the use of negative space, runs through the entire series. Inspired by the photographic masters he studied through books and exhibitions, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Man Ray, he applies a contemporary sensibility to classical subjects. The result is work that feels both of its time and outside of it.
Working in Morocco forced Woudt to confront the limits of his process. In the Netherlands, he controls every variable: light, backdrop, distance, mood. On the road, none of that existed. The challenge was not technical but psychological. It required overcoming apprehension, finding calm in unfamiliar situations, and accepting that the work would not always come on demand.
"I keep finding it difficult," he said during the trip. "In the Netherlands it feels safe as I photograph people in a studio where I direct everything. When travelling, that's different."
The most productive moments came when external conditions aligned with his internal requirements: quiet, space, and a willing subject. The shepherd in the hills. The girl at the riad. The stillness of the desert at dawn. Between those moments, there was doubt, frustration, and the persistent feeling that he was not making enough work. But that discomfort, Woudt later reflected, was precisely what pushed him back to his strengths. By moving away from the hustle, he found the simplicity that defines his visual language.