The Black Hole Anouk Kruithof (b. 1981) and Jaap Scheeren (b. 1979) graduated in 2003 at St. Joost Academy in Breda. Not long after, they were interviewed by the Dutch daily newspaper 'de Volkskrant' in a series on the future of art-school graduates. This series was titled 'the black hole'. For both of them this name came to symbolise their determination to carry on in photography. They decided to use it as a theme for an ambitious project. The duo photographed series individually and together about depression, black-outs, the universe and actual black holes. To develop this broad theme as meaningfully as possible, Scheeren and Kruithof interviewed several experts in various fields, such as psychiatrists, astronomers and biologists. They also consulted many books and the internet. Scheeren and Kruithof have combined the photos to form this publication, which can be interpreted in many ways. The pictures relate to each other in ever changing variations, engendering new, unexpected meanings. The black hole is constantly filled in new surprising ways. Becoming Blue Anouk Kruithof’s series Becoming Blue comprises 21 portraits and three spatial stills. They are presented in different formats and reveal Kruithof’s highly exceptional approach to the topic of portrait photography. During extended sessions, which Anouk Kruithof calls one-to-one performances she did not usually work behind the camera but in the rest of the room, frequently pressing the trigger by remote control. At the same time, she made constant but minor physical interventions to influence the person being portrayed, so that her photos capture the subjects gestures and facial expressions interaction to the unknown, irritation or stress. Reactions out of the blue. Blue is a colour we associate with infinity and meditative calm both in art historical as in psychological meaning. The poses and gestures of the persons portrayed obviously contradict such associations — a stylistic means that Kruithof deliberately chooses in order to visualise different emotional and psychological states during a process of surprise or even confrontation. Kruithof’s thinking in color and in the characteristics of pictures is the clearest evidence that, for Anouk Kruithof, the process of elaborating the photos is not coincidental or done for its own sake, not an experiment or test run, but a procedure carried out in accordance with the rules of beauty, in the knowledge of the characteristics of aesthetic perception — and thus artistically necessary.