october 2025
El Nido by VC Projects, 1028 1/2 N. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029
ES: Ester Spitz and Pim Kops
Writings and Photographs 1980–1983
“I'm somewhere at the top of the theater in the dark. Next to me is a spotlight. I have my thoughts here. I have a good view—the spectacle is far away in the depths. I shine light on it.” ES
This exhibition presents an intimate dialogue between word and image—between the journal writings of Ester Spitz and the evocative black-and-white photographs of Pim Kops. Drawn from formative years (1980–1983), the works trace the interior life of a young woman and the visual impressions of an observer moving quietly through the world.
At the heart of ES is a study of existence. The writings, culled from decades of notebooks, do not document a single identity but rather offer a lens into the human condition: its repetitions, its questions, its emotional contours. It is not a memoir, nor a conventional autobiography—but a meditation on consciousness, presence, and becoming. Each entry becomes a fragment of lived time, a mirror to the readers’ own inner landscape.
The accompanying photographs by Pim Kops, taken in the same era, serve as quiet witnesses. They reflect a parallel solitude—a gaze attuned to nuance, atmosphere, and the unspoken. Through these images, we glimpse the exterior world and intimate silences. They become metaphors for the interior terrain charted in Spitz’s writing.
Together, this collaboration explores vulnerability, resilience, and the poetics of the everyday. It is an offering of perspective: the written word from within, the photograph from without—both part of a greater act of witnessing.
More than anything, ES invites us to pause and reflect. To consider the theatre of being from a distance. To shine a light. And to listen.
About the Artists
Pim Kops is a Dutch photographer and musician, best known as a longtime member of the influential band De Dijk. He began his artistic practice in the 1970s, developing film in the darkroom of Cas Oorthuys and later exhibiting in Rembrandt 2000 at The Hague. Since 2009, his photographic work has focused on atmospheric scenes of Amsterdam, characterized by stillness, memory, and introspection. His images were published in the photobook Amsterdam (2015) and in the Netherlands.
Ester Spitz is a Dutch writer and poet. Born in the Netherlands and based in Los Angeles since 1985, she has worked in theater, experimental performance, and film. Since 2010, she has been developing the ES series—a lyrical, long-form exploration of life, psyche, and emotional passage. The first volume was published in March 2020.
