This is how Joerg Colberg starts his superb review: “Ordinary People, the catalogue produced at the occasion of Rob Hornstra‘s mid-career retrospective at Fotomuseum Den Haag, might feature the most atypical cover photograph. It’s slightly wonky, and it has six people pose who, this much is clear, ordinarily do not assemble in this fashion.

At the right-hand side of the group, there is a boyish looking man whose body posture betrays being tall and thus having to more or less constantly accommodate to people of more regular height. That’s Rob. There is another interloper, a man with curly hair. That’s Arnold van Bruggen, a writer and Rob’s artistic partner. Together, they have been producing some of the smartest contemporary documentary photography over the past two decades.”

A big thank you to journalist Linda van Mil, photographer Pauline Niks and newspaper De Volkskrant for the beautiful article they published about my entirely DIY exhibition Man Next Door in the former house of my deceased neighbour Kid. The article is written in Dutch. If you want to book a time slot for the exhibition, please email tentoonstelling@robhornstra.com.

Exhibition review in Dutch daily newspaper NRC: “Hornstra documented their close relationship and decided not to create a sentimental monument after Kid’s death. His life was not adequate for this due to its enormous sadness. Instead he gave him a great, dignified salute. In the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, this salute - Man Next Door - can now be seen in all its objective sensitivity.”

Book review by Joerg Colberg at Conscientious Photography Magazine: “Whatever you might want to say about Kid, he was a man in need, and when society was unable to provide for those needs, there was not going to be a happy ending. Seen that way, Man Next Door amplifies the humanism that underlies all of Rob’s work, a humanism a bit masked by the style of photography and the intensely smart storytelling, with its many different devices.”

I am very honoured that Dutch daily newspaper de Volkskrant has chosen Man Next Door as one of the best photo books of 2017. Please click on the link below to find the other selected titles.

​Review of our book ‘An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus’ on Disphotic by Lewis Bush.