World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 403 - Sanny Views

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 403 – Sanny Views
In Lokatie Laurier in the heart of the Amsterdam Jordaan I visited the opening of the exhibition ‘Bont Laurier’. The photos of Sanny Views caught the eye. She takes colorful photos of the people of Amsterdam and their city.

Sanny herself also looks colorful. When I speak to her on a Wednesday morning in a coffee shop in Amsterdam’s Scheldestraat, she is wearing a turquoise hat. Her nails and boots are the same color. She is wearing a long black dress and long earrings made from tin can tabs hang from her ears.

The bright side
Sanny: “I like exuberant and artistic. People get confused sometimes. I also use it in my pedagogy.” Because Sanny is not only a photographer, but also a pedagogue, and both activities influence each other.
In her photos, she puts everyday life in a sunny perspective, she says. “I start from what is there. I don’t stage anything, but I do accentuate. I have a great need to look for the sunny, joyful, and remarkable in everything I see. There is also humor, but only if you see it. I will never put it in.”

Pedagogy
She has a great drive that has to do with the rest of her life and her background. “I was not trained in art, nor in photography, but in pedagogy. It’s about human behavior and observing it. From the perspective of pedagogy, I regularly came into contact with dark matters, including all kinds of violence against children. Once graduated, it became my mission to increase child safety and awareness about it.” She has now committed herself to the childcare and development organization Humankind for part of the week.

Exhibition Amstel Hotel
She noticed that fighting for children’s rights sometimes affected her too much. She needed something to compensate, brighter things to balance her life. That became photography. It started in 2010, and quickly became more than a hobby. It became really professional in 2017 when she received an invitation from the then director of the Amstel Hotel, Anita Bos, to exhibit there in 2018.
“I involved a number of people from the art world to assist me, because I had to professionalize very quickly in art. I went into the business side, PR, printing and rates. I came up with a name with which I could present myself: ‘Sanny Views’.” One of the people who helped her was Peter Pappot, who at the time owned an art dealership in Spiegelstraat. She had met him through the grapevine. And through Pappot she came into contact with the well-known photographer Nico Koster.

Common thread
“They helped me tremendously. Nico Koster became a sparring partner. That is how I also came into contact with Ton Lukassen, who organizes exhibitions. Setting up an exhibition is really a profession. It’s about sightlines and viewing directions. I feel intuitively whether it’s right, but I couldn’t think of it exactly myself. He can hang the pictures in such a way that it all fits.”
She also asked Lukassen to set up in later exhibitions. And so she quickly became familiar with professional photography. “It made me very happy. It also gave me strength to draw attention to abuses against children. There is a common thread in my pedagogy and photography: I always work with the possibilities of what is available, taking into account the limitations. In both areas, the focus is on the beautiful / healthy part.”

Does Sanny have a key work, and if so, what is it?
She has. It is the photo that started it all, and which was exhibited in her first exhibition in the Amstel Hotel. It also appeared on the poster: ‘Little Blue Car’. That blue car, a Fiat 500, can also be seen on her cards. “Everything started with this. Anita Bos, of the Amstel Hotel, fell for it. It is also my best-selling work.” She took the photo on a busy day. “I was on my way for children’s rights, it was a really tough day. I was focused on fighting the ‘dark‘. What I didn’t know at the time was that at the same time it was the seed of a new career / a new fantastic part of my life. Implicitly I got the message: ‘it can’t be so dark, or something can arise’. That feels very nice.”
The photo was taken in Amsterdam, in the canal belt. A lot comes together in the car. “People said: ‘I know whose car it was’. It would be a hairdresser who worked in the canal belt. The car was parked incorrectly, I removed the license plate in the photo. That’s the pedagogue in me, making sure no one gets hurt. ‘Little Blue Car’ hangs in various places in the world, in America, in Great Britain, in Antwerp. It appeals to many people, also as an image of Amsterdam.”

What is her experience of art life?
She regularly participates in exhibitions and does special assignments. For example, she is the house photographer of the Golden Keys (Gouden Sleutels). “A very nice way to get to know all kinds of different people and to talk to them. A photo can evoke something different in someone else than in you. I am very interested in what my work does for people. In addition, I also use more and more images in my work as a pedagogue. I use my own photos to convey a message or to loosen things up, my colleagues in pedagogy now know all about that.”
Finally, what is her philosophy?
“I like to show both sides of the coin and don’t want to hide the dark side. In fact, I put the spotlight on that which cannot bear the light of day. For photography, I seek and enhance the sunny / healthy. I do the same in my pedagogy. See the possibilities, but also take the limitations into account.”

 

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https://ifthenisnow.eu/nl/verhalen/de-wereld-van-de-amsterdamse-kunstenaar-96-sanny-views