Image analysis
My field of expertise is image analysis and studying visual formations. I hold a degree in art and architectural history and continental film studies. In 2003 I finished my dissertation (cum laude), a comparative study of seventeenth-century Dutch painting, architecture and literature. This research brought the rich archive of visual knowledge and formal vocabulary to my attention that was generated in early modern Europe and which is still very much alive in our modern culture today. Within the Dutch IVMV–Foundation, my ambition as a director is to acknowledge the diversity of these image domains in which this body of knowledge is still at work. Artefacts that obey and celebrate these sophisticated visual and aesthetic qualities, by varying, combining and transgressing these rules, turn out to be forms capable of evoking the human imagination.

A discerning eye & visual formations
Looking and observing with a keen, discerning eye implies that the persuasive, transcending power of images can be noticed and that the visual formations in which they appear can be recognized. It also implies that we should take the emotional register that is evoked by images as a serious factor in public communication. This body of visual knowledge, that has migrated and developed since the early modern period, offers us a set of instruments to approach the so called ‘visual culture’ in a productive way. High art as well as popular culture should be analyzed in detail and in a systematic way, so that we may distinguish between images with high and low visual quality and potential. This allows us to understand the persuasive aspects of all kinds of (audio)visual artefacts in elite as well as in popular culture and understand their immersive impact as well as their ethical claims which play a role in public debate.

The power of public imagination
Since 2007 I have been elaborating and enlarging my program by focusing attention to the public sector where existential questions are of crucial importance and where all kinds of images are at issue: in public debate items like health and illness, violence and security, transcendence and spirituality, authority and leadership came to the fore. What role do images and fiction – movies, documentaries, and TV-series, as well as (web- and TV)ads, cartoons, (press)photography, comics, video art, classical painting, et cetera – play in the public sphere, given the (audio)visual qualities they possess? Together with other researchers with a visual expertise, we will work together in order to understand in a more profound way the formal organization of different kind of images. In this so-called ‘kijkgenootschap’, the counterpart of the 'strijdgenootschap' we do hope and expect that this knowledge will initiate a more productive debate about the persuasive mechanisms within our with images overloaded culture. Because understanding our public imagination and the variation within our mental horizon is nowadays an urgent matter.