Play. My five-year-old son Oscar is very good at it and I have to relearn how to do it. A person that plays takes risks, gives up control. I like things to be perfect. I don’t like mistakes. What if I let go and just start doing?

My son loves building things with Lego. I think his little structures are beautiful and started taking them to my studio to photograph. Now, about many Lego creations later, I have collected the photos in a book (my first!) about play.

What is play? To me, it means following joy, curiosity, my intuition. It’s about the power of imagination and experiment, about learning and adjusting while doing. Play also involves being brave. It requires me to trust the process without knowing the results, approaching the world with an open mind. I’d rather not begin something (just now), so at least it can’t go wrong. Have I forgotten how to play? It comes so easily to Oscar. ‘I never know what I’m going to make. I just begin and then it turns into something’, he tells me.

I’ve started to practice forcing myself less, allowing myself more to be led by play. If I do that, it feels lighter. Inspiration can then flow and I’m able to create from within. When I play, I’m a happier person.

For more details and to purchase the book, please visit my webshop. Here I am also selling limited edition prints of images from the book.

Poetry: from ‘Play’, by Hannah Aukes (above) and Annika Hein (below).

Utrecht © 2020