Catherine Smet
Van Nhi Nguyen
Catherine:
"My name is Catherine, I'm Belgian, the only one in my class. I live in Antwerp and go back and forth to my parents outside the city. Right now i'm trying to get through lockdown by keeping busy. I walk a lot and spend a lot of my time making music besides my studies.
I have to be honest i'm having a very hard time dealing with our way of life now. This project might come at the right time to give us all a big boost to create and experiment."
"My name is Catherine, I'm Belgian, the only one in my class. I live in Antwerp and go back and forth to my parents outside the city. Right now i'm trying to get through lockdown by keeping busy. I walk a lot and spend a lot of my time making music besides my studies.
I have to be honest i'm having a very hard time dealing with our way of life now. This project might come at the right time to give us all a big boost to create and experiment."
"To start off the theme of this week i'm sending you a photo of me and my mother (below). It was part of another project in which we had to visualise our psychological self. I found myself really relying on my mother and father in these times. Even though i like being independent, this whole situation brought us even closer. Sometimes i feel like i went back in time to when i was a teenager living at home, when family was pretty much my life. I'm very curious to hear how the dynamic with your family might have changed or how it is now."
"I found myself really relying on my mother and father in these times. Even though i like being independent, this whole situation brought us even closer. Sometimes i feel like i went back in time to when i was a teenager living at home, when family was pretty much my life. I'm very curious to hear how the dynamic with your family might have changed or how it is now.
PS: I saw that you skate on instagram! i started about a year ago and love it."
PS: I saw that you skate on instagram! i started about a year ago and love it."
"The image really shows some sort of special bond. There's something in the posture of both of you that has something intimate, as if you both know something the rest of us don't.
I took an image today of my family. Very simple and real i captured my parents' evening ritual. We live in a very clean and cold house interior wise. I feel like my parents kind of merged into one over the years. They're even matching in what they wear to go to bed.
It says a lot about how we all live together. We have our little routines and especially in these times i value them a lot. They give me structure that i really need now.
PS:Skateboarding made me bleed and bruise more than ever and i'm not even that talented but yeah it feels good to be on that board. Send me skate videos if you want to!"
I took an image today of my family. Very simple and real i captured my parents' evening ritual. We live in a very clean and cold house interior wise. I feel like my parents kind of merged into one over the years. They're even matching in what they wear to go to bed.
It says a lot about how we all live together. We have our little routines and especially in these times i value them a lot. They give me structure that i really need now.
PS:Skateboarding made me bleed and bruise more than ever and i'm not even that talented but yeah it feels good to be on that board. Send me skate videos if you want to!"
Van:
"Very nice to hear from you. I’m Van Nhi Nguyen, from Hanoi and also currently living there right now. We just got into another lockdown but it’s not too strict, it’s been kept under control here for a while but there’s a recent outburst!
Past year was quite challenging for almost everyone, it’s important to not be too hard on yourself about that haha. My goal has been to try and get myself out there, make some more work and keep busy, accumulating a lot of plants and taking care of them have been helping lots! Having a hobby really helps during these days."
"Very nice to hear from you. I’m Van Nhi Nguyen, from Hanoi and also currently living there right now. We just got into another lockdown but it’s not too strict, it’s been kept under control here for a while but there’s a recent outburst!
Past year was quite challenging for almost everyone, it’s important to not be too hard on yourself about that haha. My goal has been to try and get myself out there, make some more work and keep busy, accumulating a lot of plants and taking care of them have been helping lots! Having a hobby really helps during these days."
"At the start of the pandemic it was like that for me as well, moving back with my family and feeling a sense of deja vu, like I am still in high school. As the year unfolded, for me it was starting to become a challenge to live in harmony with my parents, as there are things between us that happened in my childhood and adolescence years that prevented our relationship from growing in an ideal way. I’m starting to confine in my sibling, my younger sister, instead, as we’re not too far apart in age. We grew a stronger bond and rely on each other a lot this past year. During that I also realized that sibling relationships also take its shape, with a lot of realization and build between them, like how important it is to keep a relationship with your sibling, around the age of 17-23. I am also building a series upon this idea, so it’s actually great that our first week is about family! Attached is an image of me and my sister I took recently on our trip to the outskirts of Hanoi.
A photographer that I look up to is Alessandra Sanguinetti, with her recent project capturing a pair of cousins and their relationship with each other that also fall into the category of family, “The Adventure of Guille and Belinda and the Illusion of an Everlasting Summer”. I love how the images give such a sweet and comforting feeling, and how the lighting is natural create and nostalgic and familiar emotion.
I think that family is such a complex subject, as everyone has different experiences with them. It’s also an important background of people, and I feel like the relationship between one person with their family tells us a bit about them as a person.
And yes! I recently started skating again after a year of break. I almost forgot how to do a frontside! It’s so nice to finally be on my board again, and I'm also so glad you’re loving it!"
A photographer that I look up to is Alessandra Sanguinetti, with her recent project capturing a pair of cousins and their relationship with each other that also fall into the category of family, “The Adventure of Guille and Belinda and the Illusion of an Everlasting Summer”. I love how the images give such a sweet and comforting feeling, and how the lighting is natural create and nostalgic and familiar emotion.
I think that family is such a complex subject, as everyone has different experiences with them. It’s also an important background of people, and I feel like the relationship between one person with their family tells us a bit about them as a person.
And yes! I recently started skating again after a year of break. I almost forgot how to do a frontside! It’s so nice to finally be on my board again, and I'm also so glad you’re loving it!"
"This image is showing the mental state that I'm living in. In these difficult times I'm relying on a support system. That support is my mother. For me this image shows comfort and warmth. I'm looking straight into the camera to invite the viewer into my world. My mother is not very present in this photo except for her hands that are holding me. The photo is not a portrait of the two of us. It's about the way she makes me feel and the role she plays in my life. I wanted it to be very simply portrayed by an embrace. Something we're all dying to do these days. Hold one another."