Hendrik Kerstens did not train formally as an artist. However, he wished to devote himself to a more creative profession and in 1995, at the age of forty, he left the business world and took up photography. His wife Anna worked full time to support this change of direction. In a reversal of more traditional roles, Kerstens cared for their young daughter Paula, while also studying photography during the day. Having a child left a deep impression on Hendrik. Through photography he explored the accompanying feelings of responsibility, vulnerability and love he felt towards his daughter, starting with documentary family snapshots. As Paula physically and psychologically grew, Hendrik Kerstens searched for an artistic manifestation of these chang-es, leading to his interpretation of the great Dutch Master painters of the 17th century.
Paula Kerstens is an art historian. In 2017 she graduated from KU Leuven with her master’s thesis on the relationship between nineteenth-century portrait photography and baroque painting. She gives lectures for cultural institutions at home and abroad and writes articles about the collaboration with her father for international art magazines and journals. She plays an active role in the realization of exhibitions about their work.
Hendrik and Paula Kerstens, who worked many times with Kathy Ryan from The New York Times Magazine, were awarded the PANL award (2001) in the Netherlands; the Taylor Wesing Photographic Portrait Prize (2008) at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the silver Lead Award Medaillon, Porträtfotografie des Jahres (2010) in Germany and the 11th Lucie Award (2013). Hendrik and Paula Kersten’s works and ideas were included in Alexander McQueen’s spectacular show The Horn of Plenty: Everyting but the Kitchen Sink, a retrospective on 15 shocking years in fashion.