Danielle van Zadelhoff was born in 1963 in Amsterdam, Holland. She lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.
In 2013 she purchased her first camera and from that moment on, she became obsessed with photography, and it became the way to express herself.
Starting young in an art minded family ,with a father who also painted and sculpted, she has been constantly engaged in art . She spent a lot of time in the family home library filled with books about history and art. A couple of years after the death of her father, she got acquainted with the photographer Leopold Beels van Heemstede, who introduced photography into her life and became her mentor. To learn the technical aspects she followed almost a year long daily professional training in Antwerp.
The combination of photography and her education and fascination with the human psyche gives her photos a tension that leaves no one untouched. On this subject Danielle says: “I am inspired by the big themes in life, loneliness, vulnerability, the raw pure emotions in daily life. I want to capture this in the image, something that is almost invisible, but always present.” There are also a couple of images where religion comes to the surface: “I was raised in a Protestant school with a Catholic grandmother and a humanistic father. Religion is so integrated in our society and it is also a big theme in the seventeenth century painting.” Her background of restoring historical buildings becomes evident through the sophisticated touch and finesse of her work and the attention to detail and proportions.
Characteristic for Danielle’s work is the frequent use of ChiaroScuro a technique popular among the painters in the Renaissance such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Murillo and others. “When I am working in my studio I am always fascinated by the light, which makes the models transcend above themselves and head to something universal”.