“Photography has always fascinated me: for graduating as a veterinarian I was given a Minolta device with three lenses. After a serious back operation, however, I could not continue as a veterinarian and I decided to turn my life around. In the early eighties I followed my first photography training with photographer Hans Biezen in Eindhoven and tried to find my own theme.
In 1987 I found that. I had taken a series of photos in Vittel, in France. Nice pictures, but something was missing. I then did a workshop with those photos at the Rotterdam photographer Marrie Bot. She said that the pictures were technically fine, but that I was way too distant. That was absolutely right: I did not dare to photograph the French up close. Bot gave me a photo book by the photographer Gilles Peres, who had made a book about the revolution in Iraq. Impressive photos, but I didn't really feel like making such a series myself. That next morning in Den Andel I woke up to such a noise that I thought: it looks like war. It was the farmers who moved into the polder to plow. I grabbed my Leica and went outside to take pictures. I developed that roll that same afternoon; there were immediately one or two good photos with it. That afternoon I started photographing the farmers again, and I kept that up for ten years. I had found my job: farmers.”
Lying in the grass
“The ball started rolling very quickly. The photo editor of the trade magazine 19NU, about horticulture and agriculture in the Netherlands, had heard that my work was beautiful. We agreed, and that same afternoon I got my first assignment. Then they kept coming. The big advantage, of course, was that I actually knew something about it: I had completed agricultural school, I plowed, I rowed potatoes. That allowed me to get very close.
In the meantime, I was already taking landscape photos. After fifteen years of photographing farmers, I was a bit tired of that; then I started to focus even more on the Wad, where I now also lived a lot closer. I also went into the salt marsh a lot. What I now show in Kunstpunt are mainly many of those landscapes. North Groningen fascinates me because of the space. For example, if you go to the Dollardpolders, there is almost nothing there. I love that. But there must be something visible in the image: movement or tension. I always say: if there is a clear blue sky, you should lie down on the grass.”
Always the same landscape
“I like to photograph the same place for long periods of time. For example, for four or five years I regularly photographed the 'Hang', an old building in Laaksum. I had read an article about painter Willem van Althuis who had painted that house in different shades of gray. I found that so fascinating that I thought, I'm going to photograph that house too. But because it was so ugly, I shot it out of focus. This created very exciting images, especially because I kept going back at different times. In the end, 21 of those photos were exhibited in Museum Belvédère.
I am now doing a lot of cleaning; I don't want to burden the kids with too much junk. Of the 100 photos I made on commission, 98 go in the trash: there is nothing on it that I can still do something with, or that is still interesting for an archive. But I still shoot. I have always loved the French photographer Cartier Bresson, he always talked about 'le moment décisif' in photography: the decisive moment. That somewhere in France I see a bench opposite a church, where a boy is cycling around. I drop to my knees and at that exact moment the boy cycles over the edge of the couch. And then I click. That is now more difficult because of my back, but 'moments' still fascinate me: an incidence of light that has disappeared a few minutes later.”
View all works by Hans Sas in our art collection here.
Noord Neder Land can be seen at Kunstpunt Groningen until 17 July 2021.
Note: this article has been translated using Google Translate