Hugo GOUDSWAARD

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Hugo Goudswaard’s work revolves around a tension: that between exposure and control, intimacy and identity. Trained at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague, he began his career in film before gradually turning to photography, which he practices as a more personal and independent pursuit. His approach starts from darkness rather than fighting it: he works with shadow, texture, and duration, and brings his images to life from blackness as if it were a material. For him, light serves not to clarify but to test the limits of presence. Likewise, the body in his work is never static: it oscillates between vulnerability and restraint, visibility and concealment. The result? Desire, shame, subcultures, and power dynamics run through his practice, addressed with precision rather than spectacle. Shaped by personal experiences of loss and transformation, as well as by the lasting influence of a religious upbringing centered on morality, the body, and desire, he explores the tension between what is felt and what is permitted. His photographs and films have been exhibited internationally and have won awards in both Europe and the United States. “My work begins with black—not as a void, but as a source,” he says.