VAN ROEKEL, Florian - How Terry likes his Coffee

SIGNED COPY OF THE SECOND EDITION

Personal statement by Dutch photographer Florian van ROEKEL.

"In 'How Terry likes his Coffee' I explored the effects of professionalization on the way we deal with reality and with each other. (...) For fifteen months I explored five different offices in theNetherlands. The book is about feeling disconnected from your daily environment while longing for a real personal connection with another human being. I argue that office culture and our society as a whole are preoccupied with a rational mode of interpretation. I was looking for the invisible barriers and the will to break them. This work was created as part of the final exam of my Bachelor of Photography at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, The Netherlands." (Florian van ROEKEL)

Book Review, Content

"The book 'How Terry Likes His Coffee' by Florian van ROEKEL starts with scribbles on notes - flowers, arrows, faces, houses. Just what you say when you're bored on the phone and happen to have a pen in your hand. But in the book 'How Terry Likes His Coffee. A Photo Odyssey into Office Life' by Florian van ROEKEL is about people in the office. And from the point of view of the Dutch photographer (*1980), this is one thing above all: bleak. By using a flash set up sideways, he has created intense images of isolated-looking people in a simple way - they stand alone at the copy machine, dismayed in a queue or sitting at their desks almost in despair. But even in groups, his protagonists never seem to belong together; they seem as out of place as the balloons hanging from the office ceiling. But the way he's photographed them, the balloons and the moronic paper decorations around them take on something grimacing and menacing. The same goes for the portraits of backs of heads - after all, that's exactly what you see of your so-called colleagues and employees in the office most of the time.
Florian van ROEKEL is not a misanthrope.On the contrary, he is an enemy of inhumane working conditions.And they don't just take place where you clichédly assume they do, i.e. in Chinese mines, Bangladeshi textile factories and at the Schlecker around the corner.It's about the alienation of modern man from his work.Not that everything was always better in the past - but the idea of the nine-to-five job is an illusion and an invention of industrialization.Before that, people didn't adhere to time clocks, shift work, mileage rates and a vacation to be submitted a year in advance - they didn't even know what it was.'How Terry likes his Coffee' by Florian van ROEKEL therefore calls for a rethink and for people to ask themselves what their own work actually means to them and what it's worth to them."(© Damian Zimmermann)

Additional information

The photo book 'How Terry Likes His Coffee' by Florian van ROEKEL was designed by the prominent book designer Sybren (SYB) KUIPER. The first edition was 500 copies, of the second edition 1000 numbered copies were printed and circulated.
"The self-published volume 'How Terry Likes His Coffee' was a huge success. It was voted one of the best books of the year by many critics and fellow photographers.Not only was his photographic work celebrated, but also the fact that he self-published a high quality book and reached many readers without traditional distribution channels. The publication of this and other notable self-published books that year contributed to the general recognition of the self-published photographic book and the beginning of its recent boom.The first edition of 'How Terry Likes His Coffee,' distributed directly by van ROEKEL, quickly sold out."(© Dalpine)

About Dutch photographer, Florian van ROEKEL (b. 1980)

Photobooks by Florian van ROEKEL