I WONDER ABOUT REALITY.
WHEN, AS A CHILD, I WOULD LOOK UP AT THE STARRY SKY, I WOULD GET SCARED. BECAUSE IT WOULD REMIND ME OF THE CONCEPT OF INFINITY, BECAUSE THAT PHENOMENON IS NOT PRESENT IN EVERYDAY LIFE. IT WOULD FEEL LIKE A SHORT CIRCUIT IN MY BRAIN. REALITY WOULD STOP MAKING SENSE.
BEING IN AN UNFAMILIAR ENVIRONMENT, FAR AWAY FROM HOME, COULD RESULT IN SIMILAR EXPERIENCES. WHEN WE WERE IN SWITZERLAND, AND I SAW MOUNTAINS FOR THE FIRST TIME, I THOUGHT THAT MAYBE WE ARE ACTUALLY MINUSCULE, LIKE ANTS, OR EVEN INVISIBLE, TO A WORLD THAT IS MUCH LARGER THAN OURS, A WORLD SO LARGE THAT WE CANNOT SEE IT. AND SOMETIMES WHEN I WOULD BE IN THE CAR WITH PAPA, AND I WOULD LOOK UP AT THE SKY, WHICH I THOUGHT LOOKED LIKE A DOME, I THOUGHT I SAW THE OUTSIDE OF THE DOME OF ANOTHER WORLD.
I AM WONDERING IF OUR REALITY IS REALLY JUST A STORY. - Excerpt from “ES” A study based on journals by Ester spitz
Word and image in dialogue: ES
ES: ESTER SPITZ AND PIM KOPS
Writings and Photographs 1981–1983
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. — Ester Spitz “ES”
This exhibition presents an intimate dialogue between word and image—a study based on journals of Ester Spitz and the evocative black-and-white photographs of Pim Kops. Drawn from formative years (1981–1983), 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 journals, do not document a single identity but rather offer a lens into the human condition—its repetitions, its questions, its emotional contours. This is not memoir in the conventional sense, nor autobiography, but a meditation on consciousness, presence, and becoming. Each entry becomes a fragment of lived time, a mirror to the reader’s 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 unsaid. Through these images, we glimpse both exterior world and intimate silence. 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,.
HAVE BOOTS FIXED PICK UP DRESS - Ester Spitz from “ES”
Forward
The collaboration between Ester Spitz and Pim Kops, created between 1981 and 1983, belongs to a lineage of artistic exchanges where writing and photography intertwine to articulate the complexity of being. Their work is deeply personal yet resonates with broader cultural currents of the time, when European art and literature sought to reconcile private experience with the shifting landscape of modernity.
Ester Spitz’s writings, are a study drawn from her extensive journals, and offer a candid account of the self in formation. They oscillate between confession and meditation, narrative and fragment—echoing a tradition of women diarists yet also moving toward something less easily categorized. Existential in tone, they probe identity, desire, and the search for meaning.
Pim Kops’s photographs, meanwhile, preserve not only the appearance of a subject but the atmosphere of intimacy itself. In these portraits of Ester, we encounter both presence and distance: the immediacy of her gaze and posture, and the quiet knowledge that the camera inevitably frames and fixes. Susan Sontag observed that “to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed” (On Photography, 1977). Yet Kops’s images complicate this notion. They do not reduce Ester to an object of possession but reveal instead the reciprocal vulnerability of artist and muse. The camera here becomes not an instrument of control but a medium of trust.
Together, these writings and images construct a shared phenomenology of being. They are documents of youth and love but also records of an existential search that transcends biography. What we witness is not only a relationship captured in fragments but a cultural inquiry into intimacy and creativity in late-20th-century Europe.
Four decades later, their reunion in this exhibition allows us to revisit the question Sontag posed: what does it mean to preserve an instant, to fix in language or image what is by nature ephemeral? In the case of Spitz and Kops, the answer lies not in permanence but in resonance. These works endure because they remain unfinished, open—inviting each reader and viewer to continue the dialogue.
I DID NOT KNOW I OPENED A BOOK AND DISAPPEARED TO ANOTHER LIFE. WE STOOD IN THE CORRIDOR OF THE STATELY CANAL HOUSE WHEN HE TOLD ME I GOT THE PART.
SUDDENLY THERE WAS A TREE, IN BLOOM. FIRST THERE WAS NOTHING AND THEN IT WAS THERE.
I WENT DOWN A STAIRCASE AND DOWN A NARROW CORRIDOR, AT THE END OF THE CORRIDOR THERE WAS A DOOR, I WENT THROUGH THE DOOR AND ENTERED A LARGE ROOM WITH A MARBLE FLOOR AND LARGE WINDOWS OVERLOOKING A GARDEN AND THE BACKS OF THE HOUSES OF THE NEXT CANAL. THERE WAS A LOT OF LIGHT, SUNLIGHT FLOODED INTO THE ROOM. I ENTERED THE ROOM AND HE SMILED AT ME. HE SAT AT A TABLE BY THE WINDOW, GOT UP, SHOOK MY HAND AND SAID, ‘I AM JULIEN’. I SAT DOWN OPPOSITE HIM. HE WAS WEARING A STRIPED OXFORD SHIRT. HE TOLD ME HE LIVES IN AMERICA AND KNOWS THE SCHOOL WHERE I TOOK CLASSES VERY WELL. HE LOOKED AT ME AND ASKED ME QUESTIONS. HE LIKED MY ANSWERS. HE SMILED, HE PAID ATTENTION TO ME IN A WAY THAT NO ONE EVER HAS. HE LOOKED AT ME AS IF EVERYTHING I SAID AND DID WERE WONDERFUL LITTLE MIRACLES THAT I WAS SCATTERING AROUND, HE LOOKED AT ME AS IF ONE IS SUPPOSED TO BE PRECISELY LIKE I AM. - Ester Spitz “ES”
Curatorial Notes: Behind the Exhibition ES
The process of shaping ES has been, above all, an act of listening—listening to words written in solitude and to photographs that carry their own quiet silences. From this, a rhythm began to emerge: the writings reveal the interior life, while the photographs witness the exterior.
I have taken my cues from the writer and the lens artist, allowing them to guide me on a journey through text and imagery. Ester’s selection of text is not delivered to each photograph but instead remains abstract, luminous, and mystifying. Word and image intertwine, weaving a narrative that does not belong solely to either artist but instead opens toward each viewer or reader. In this way, ES becomes a meditation on the human condition—what it means to be free, full of life, melancholy, or even to question reality itself.
The curation has been an experiment, setting up parameters that could be completely demolished. Ester is shaping much of the photographic selection herself, choosing based on story or image, on what these memories mean to her today. This openness yields the immersive experience of ES. Pim, who has mountains of photographs from that time, offers a vast visual archive—but I was clear that the exhibition should not simply present an array of sumptuous images. It is not a portrait of beauty, but a meditation on emotion, memory, and the human condition: movements of bliss, wonder, and solitude. That they would both shape.
As curator of this exhibition, I saw my role as that of a guide—one who would listen and shape space, while allowing the story to unfold. This is, above all, Ester and Pim’s story, returning to us forty years later, and now ours to behold.
Countless hours have been shared across time zones and screens: Ester calling Pim in Amsterdam, the three of us connecting over FaceTime, weaving together fragments of memory and image. Our process was not about imposing order but about play—moving between photographs and text, letting them guide the narration. The exhibition emerged from this dialogue, where word and image began to speak for themselves, revealing a story both intimate and universal.
To curate ES is to hold a dialogue between past and present, interior and exterior, word and image. It is to create a space where consciousness is mirrored back, and where viewers may find themselves reflected in the theatre of being.
— Victoria Chapman, Curator
“ES” — Ester Spitz and Pim Kops: Writings and Photography (1981–1983)
Opens Saturday, October 4, 2025
Artist Reception: 2–5 PM
El Nido by VC Projects
1028 ½ N. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029
www.elnidostudio.art | victoria@vcprojects.art
Exhibition Dates: October 4 – November 8, 2025
Studio Events Related to the Exhibition
Saturday, October 4 — Opening Reception (2–5 PM)
Saturday, October 11 — Open Tea (2–5 PM)
Saturday, October 18 — Ester Spitz Book Signing & Discussion of “ES” (2–5 PM)
Saturday, October 25 — Photo Discussion: Ester Spitz on Being the Muse (2–5 PM)
Saturday, November 1 — Open Tea (2–5 PM)
Saturday, November 8 — Closing Reception (2–5 PM)