Hidden Dangers
Van Santen & Bolleurs' recent photography project for NRC NL explores harmful yet invisible substances in everyday products. Asbestos in play sand, PFAS in backyard eggs, hormone-disrupting chemicals in headphones, a cocktail of substances in hair extensions.
The main challenge for this brief was to visualise these invisible dangers. So, Van Santen & Bolleurs made the invisible tangible. An egg dipped in blue pigment powder. A hair extension bleeding pink paint. Headphones quietly leaking slime. Play sand releasing a puff of smoke. Soft pastel colours, harmless-looking objects with something seeping out that clearly shouldn’t be there.
The entire series was built on one tabletop. Hair extension taped to a rod, headphones hanging from wire (held in shape by a wooden skewer), egg balancing on a pedestal and a hand with a squeeze bottle doing the ‘leaking’.
