Photographer Photobombs Families In Their Homes (1973)

 

For his series Met mijn gezin (With My Family), made in 1973, Dutch photographer Hans Eijkelboom rang the doorbells of strangers’ houses. Having waited the man of the house to leave, Eijkelboom would ask the woman who answered the door to pose in a family portrait with him in the role of the father. ⁣⁣⁣⁣

Seen together, the photos are strangely convincing, not least because he seems to fit right in every time – wearing clothes similar to the women’s and often balancing a happy-looking child on his knee.

 

 

That same year, he’d also created In de krant (In the Newspaper), in which he photobombed pictures in a local newspaper for ten consecutive days. “Every day in the newspaper there was an agenda of what was going to happen the next day: a list of important events, between eight and ten,” he says. “I would go to all eight/ten events and one of them would work. Also, I listened to the police radio and, as soon as they reported an accident, I would rush to the place with my bike to stand among the public near the accident.”

 

 

In another series, Hans Eijkelboom would appear alongside famous politicians and artist, looking into how you become important if you’re photographed with important people.

In another, a number of people who he knew quite well in college about ten years earlier, but who he’d not seen afterwards, were contacted by an assistant of mine, with the following questions:

1) What do you remember about Hans Eijkelboom?
2) What occupation do you think he has at the moment?

Each response was illustrated by a photograph of Hans Eijkelboom in which he personifies the profession attributed to him by the people who were interviewed. It’s really funny. Here’s one reply and the accompanying picture (via 1x):

“Yes, he lived in our street. A tall guy, he also had a younger sister and a little dog, Loukie, a little black skipper dog. If he had had the opportunity he would have become a jet pilot, but things like that are hard to realise mostly. I didn’t see very much of him, he had friends on the Hazenkampseweg. He built a cart once, with those boys, on bicycle wheels, and driven by the engine of a lawnmower, a kind of skelter. I’ve also been in school with him, I think he was two grades higher, but then he failed to pass. Learning wasn’t very easy to him. Some question, his occupation? Something in business I think, because I remember that at a certain stage he and a friend had discovered that one bank paid more for dollars than the other, and they used to buy dollars at one bank and sell them again to another or something, I don’t know exactly. Banking seems very likely to me.”

 

 

Perhaps his best known series is Photo Note, collages of people out shopping. The people in each collage are wearing similar outfits.