Shelf Sessions: Gijs Determeijer

“Actually you should’ve visited my mom. She used to be a publisher.” Although Gijs Determeijer practically lives in his mother’s backyard, we decided to stay at his place. As a partner and executive producer at production company and photography agency HALAL, Gijs works in an industry that’s even more ephemeral than books. Commercials depend on waves, and it’s Gijs’ work to link the right photographer to the right client in order to make sure that wave is being surfed on. 

Check out some favorites from Gijs Determeijer’s shelves.

“A professional hustler,” that’s how Gijs describes himself. With HALAL, he produces commercials, movies, and photoshoots—both nationally and internationally. Photographers like Lotte van Raalte, Olya Oleinic, Nick van Tiem and Karen Rosetzsky are on HALAL’s roster, as well as filmmakers like Mees Peijnenburg, Emmanuel Adjei, Steffen Haars, Madja Amin, and Sam de Jong. A talented roster that balances between artistically challenging, and commercially marketable. “As a maker, I think you should appreciate the challenge in commercial work. It allows you to work with bigger budgets, and perhaps gets you a chance to work with that one model you wouldn’t get to work with if it was your own project. For example what Olya Oleinic does for a brand, isn’t that far away from what she would do in her personal projects. That’s because she stays true to her own signature, and that’s exactly why clients want her.”

 

We’re visiting Gijs in his newly (almost) finished house, deep in Amsterdam Noord. “It used to be a workshop, and we started this big project three years ago simultaneously with my mother’s house. We practically refurbished the whole thing from scratch, and it’s an amazing feeling to finally be able to live here. It’s such a revelation to hear birds and frogs instead of cars and trams in the morning.”

Gijs now lives a thirty-minute bike ride to the Prinsengracht, where HALAL’s Amsterdam office is located. Started in 2005 as 100% Halal with making music videos for Dutch record labels like Top Notch, HALAL is now an allround production company making movies (Prince, New Kids), commercials, documentaries and occasionally a music video. “It was started by one of my partners, Gijs Kerbosch, but I guess he was tired of dealing with clients after a while so he asked me to join. Now we run it with four partners.” The others being Roel Oude Nijhuis and Olivia Sophie van Leeuwen.

With the addition of Gijs and the others, HALAL started moving towards commercials, documentary films and photography. “At a certain point it was like: “oh, we have a small budget, let’s go to HALAL.” But that often meant that we didn’t get the great assignments. So it was better for us to make music videos, because they brought us to another level, creatively. That’s why our approach isn’t per se to make a lot of money. We aim for originality, and then you see that the market is coming our way. Now we have award-winning directors and photographers, which means clients are willing to pay more money. Sometimes it’s better to stay low at first, and do creatively challenging projects that don’t earn you a lot. When you make great things, the money will come naturally.”

Gijs is an executive producer, and he’s in charge of the photography & commercial part of HALAL. He has seen the changes that have happened within photography in the past decades from an up-close perspective that not many have. “The cool thing about photography is that it comes and goes in waves. When I started, Gregory Crewdson was the biggest thing imaginable. But when the budgets started to shrink, there was no money to do such productions so we would just hire a set photographer and do some graphic work for cheap—no one wanted to pay those Gregory Crewdson budgets anymore. The interesting thing you see now is that it’s slowly coming back. Photographers like Alex Prager manage to get big photography productions of the ground. Noel Loozen did a project called The End, in which he depicts various ways to die—also a big almost movie-like production. Toilet Paper also works with a lot of sets and productions. I feel like it’s coming back a bit, and I think that’s really cool.”

 

The photographers he talks about are the photographers we find on his shelves. Gijs owns a lot of art books, like Taschen’s Basquiat book, for example, and books from his favorite painter David Hockney. He also owns a lot of interior books from the likes of Studio KO (Gijs’ interior was inspired by this book),  Kinfolk and Wonderplants, and cookbooks from Nopi and Soho House. On that same shelf, there’s a book from Todd Selby, who was extremely popular ten years ago, but now has become pretty much irrelevant. “It’s actually quite difficult. The one moment a photographer can be the hottest thing in town, and two years later it can be completely gone. Things go in and out of fashion, you can’t stop that. But you can reinvent yourself, and we, as agents, try to select the photographers of whom we trust that they are able to stand the tests of time.”

 

In commercial photography it’s not much different. Twenty years ago, a Dutch photographer could earn himself an extreme amount of money with one assignment, now it’s more like fifty photographers are battling against each other for a couple hundred euros. “It’s even different from what it was ten years ago. Luckily we don’t have to focus on the Dutch market alone anymore. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to make it, you had to go to London, Paris, New York or Hollywood. Inez & Vinoodh are a good example of that. At HALAL, we’re trying to go against that by staying in Amsterdam while still having such a global reach. We’re using the fact that we’re from Amsterdam as something positive. It’s not just that cute little village. We’re serious imagemakers.”

With Inez & Vinoodh he names a duo that stands among his favorite photographers. “I keep on coming back to this book. It’s so weird and cool. Narda and Jochem have the limited edition? Well, damn. Maybe, someday.” Other favorites are Scheltens & Abbenes (“Maurice lives across the street”), Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek, and Viviane Sassen. “She is constantly evolving, but you still recognize her work as hers. Always. I think she’s my favorite photographer right now. We did a small film campaign with her a couple of years back. I would love to work with her again someday, my door is always open. So Viviane, if you’re reading this…”

Perhaps that is what makes a good photographer; to be able to adapt, without losing your signature. “I think a good photographer knows what his or her limitations are. People shouldn’t pretend to be knowing something when they don’t. With HALAL we’ve learned that when you’re honest about your strengths and your limitations, you know what you can add and you know what you need from someone else. We had never made a car commercial before, so when we were asked to do one in Germany (we recently set up an office in Berlin) we said: “we’ve never done that before, but we think we could do this and this.” Now we are making car commercials. With photographers it’s the same. If you’re good at shooting digitally, you don’t have to shoot analog. I actually think you maybe shouldn’t.”

Then what are the criteria that Gijs looks for in a photographer? With plenty of portfolios under his nose, and more than a decade of work experience, he has developed an eye for judging photographers’ work. “You have photographers who stay an assistant for very long, and learn the craft by doing that. But you also have photographers who instantly create something of their own, without having the technical skills. I’m not the most knowledgeable guy when it comes to photography either, so I won’t judge that, but I know when something works. Nowadays, there are a lot of people who make similar things, so it’s hard to find someone who has a distinctive voice. It’s also important that they have potential to grow. And finally, but maybe even more important; is he or she nice to work with? I have to be able to sell you to client.”

Gijs has been in the industry for over a decade. First as an assistant director and photography producer, later as a partner at HALAL. “At a certain point, my friends said: “you know how to handle shit, can you produce this shoot?” So I became a professional facilitator. Throughout my career I made steps towards facilitating bigger and bigger productions. Up to the point where I am now.”

The way he works is also reflected in his new home. The photographs and art in his house all have a special story attached to them. The two photographs in his bedroom are extra special. “This photo of Yoko and John was made by Nico Koster when they were on their honeymoon in the Hilton in Amsterdam. They locked themselves up for two weeks to protest the Vietnam war. I bought it for our honeymoon, and put it up in our own hotel room as a surprise. What I like about this one is that John is calling from his bed. It’s kind of symbolic for how I always used to be in bed with my phone.”

Koster’s photo hangs right next to another interesting story. “I found this photo a few years ago, and I was amazed by it. I had to have it. The only problem was that I couldn’t find the photographer anywhere. So at a certain point I just ended up typing in his name on Facebook and randomly sending him a message like: “hey, are you the photographer of this photo? I would like to buy it.” He was, but he wasn’t a photographer anymore. He just always had his camera with him during the eighties. He said: “Here’s the hi-res, do whatever you want with it.” He gave it to me for free, so that’s why it has such a nice frame, haha.

Photography by Olya Oleinic, Marc de Groot’s portrait of Chloe Sevigny, and Keith Coventry’s McDonald’s-inspired art can also be found in Gijs’ home. “Brigitte (Gijs’ wife, ed.) and I always gift each other art. That way, you build a nice collection over the years. I’m lucky to know so many cool artists. That’s the benefit of my job. I’m a hustler.”

As we prepare for our trip back, the rain is coming down with buckets. We we’re not really dressed for the occasion, and since it’s a thirty-minute bike ride, Gijs offers to drive us back (thanks for the offer!). “I’ll try to put your bikes in my trunk. Let’s see how we can arrange that.” Always a hustler.