DOUBLE DUTCH
DOUBLE DUTCH
RGB is a monthly event in Hong Kong, organised and hosted by Graham Uden, to share work and meet with other professionals in the industry. Oscar Venhuis and Kees Metselaar, both from Holland, were invited to talk at the RGB event. Oscar Venhuis was introducing and explaining the landscape of Social Media (follow this link to read practical tips for bloggers). Kees Metselaar was the second speaker during the evening presenting his 'Kees Studies'.
Hong Kong based photographer Graham Uden currently specialises in editorial features, reportage, travel, corporate and commercial photography in the Asia region. This has involved being roughed up by ex-President Clinton’s secret service bodyguards in Hong Kong, being held up by AK-47 toting ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers in Cambodia, crawling across minefields in Laos, squatting 300 metres from Taleban frontline trenches in the Afghanistan War and narrowly missing suicide bombs in Baghdad.
Kees Metselaar was born on a dairy farm in the north of Holland and came to Hong Kong in 1989. He had started working as a photo journalist in Amsterdam in 1985 after graduating in microbiology at the Free University and working for the international aid organisation Novib. Trips to Afghanistan followed during the war with the Soviets, and to Sudan covering the famine and refugee crisis. After that, to Asia for the fall of President Marcos in the Philippines. From Hong Kong he covered events in the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia and Burma. He was in Jakarta for the fall of President Suharto, the conflicts in Aceh and Papua and the Bali Bomb.
In 2002 his Afghanistan photos were part of a prestigious exhibition in the Netherlands Fotomuseum about Dutch War Photography in the 20th century. After working from Bangkok for a few years he returned to Hong Kong in 2006. Assignments in China and Vietnam followed, as well as an exhibition of the disappearing lifestyle and markets of old Hong Kong Central, at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong.
The news is not his only subject - for example, his acclaimed corporate reportage of the dry-docking of a supertanker, and documenting of aid projects in Laos.
Still based in Hong Kong he covers the region including China and Indonesia and also teaches photojournalism at the University of Hong Kong.
In the Netherlands he is represented by the photo agency Hollandse Hoogte and in Hong Kong some of his prints are being sold by Picture This.
