BIOGRAPHY

Rob Sweebe was born in 1948 on the Indonesian island of Bali. After moving to the Netherlands, he studied photography at Breda School of Art. He went on to practice virtually every discipline within photography. Professionally, his focus was on publicity and advertising photography. Rob loved to take photos and was prolific: both in the studio and on location, for business and private clients alike.

Besides his professional work, Rob used his camera to create images of the world around him. He can become fascinated by the colours, shapes and lines to be found in living nature; but also by the interplay between the man-made and the natural. The human race’s impact on the Earth was something that began to concern him even as a child. He was grabbed by activist themes, such as air pollution and overpopulation, from early on. And yet he is also fascinated by the flipside of human expansion: by bleak images of damaged nature or neglected buildings. But a moment later, Rob can be touched when he sees how carefully we lay out our homes, gardens and cities, or tenderly dress our children. That silent story, that window to our soul, is one he wants to capture and preserve.

Since 1997, Rob has been slowly phasing out his commercial work. This has created the space to expand and organize his non-commercial work for exhibitions and festivals.

Like any photographer or landscape artist, Rob is lyrical about Dutch skies and the stray light created in the slightly overcast Western hemisphere. Some also recognize a subtle Asian touch to Rob’s work. This gentle echo of his early childhood in the ‘Belt of Emerald’ is something usually recognized by kindred spirits.

On this site, Rob exhibits his free work for us, for the general public. It is his on-going exhibition, one he is constantly adapting and expanding. His collection of images as they became visible through the disclosing light. Images of varying sources and styles, yet inextricably linked together by a lifetime. That is Rob’s theme: poetry, decline and rejuvenation.