When you think of a bus driver, which image comes to mind first? When I ask this question to random people I almost always get the same answer. When people asked me what kind of work I did, I almost always got the same response. “Are you a bus driver? I never expected that.” How do you define a bus driver? There still seems to be a stereotype and that is completely unjustified. I worked for 12 years as a bus driver for a large carrier on the regular service. When I started my new adventure in early 2008, I suddenly had a lot of colleagues. Here I got the same reaction, at the coffee table, during my break, some of them expressed surprised. I found it fascinating.
In 2016 I graduated from the Fotovakschool Amsterdam. I no longer was only a bus driver, but now also a photographer. I was in two different worlds, which seemed to be far apart. At the end of 2018, I was ready to start my shift on the bus, when a new colleague arrived. A fresh looking man in his early twenties, tight in the uniform, slick haircut. If he were a footballer or a rapper, I would have believed it right away. He formed the inspiration for my photography project ‘Don’t Speak To The Bus Driver’ ('Niet Speken Met De Bestuurder'). New generations are ready to succeed. Lateral entrants also know how to find their way and decide to start a new career on the bus, see, for example, a former well-known Dutch politician who became my colleague. I approached my colleagues with the request to portray them.
With this project I show a reflection of this profession and how I relate to my now ex-colleagues as a photographer. In the past, the sign "Don’t speak to the bus driver" could be read on the bus at the top right at the entrance. That sign is dated and has been replaced by security cameras. With this series I show the diversity among bus drivers and especially the person behind the uniform. The stereotypical bus driver does not exist, like the sign it is outdated, but strangely enough still lives on. Two different worlds that have come together for 1.5 years and where I have now said goodbye to one. I now identify as a photographer and when someone asks what I'm doing, I never get the response: "I don't think you're the type for that at all."