Eva Damstra
- Anna Lilli Garai
- May 27
- 4 min read
Eva Damstra uses photography to track where she’s been and how it felt to be there. Her work moves through the quiet mess of early adulthood—friendships changing, rooms emptying, time passing. Shot on analogue film, her images sit somewhere between diary and observation.
She’s often in front of the camera, but it’s not about self-display. It’s a way of checking in, asking questions, marking shifts. The result feels honest without needing to explain everything. Just the right light, a gesture, a pause—enough to hold something real.
Q: You focus on the in-between years—twenty to twenty-five. What made that time feel so urgent to capture?
A: In this period I noticed that everything changes. But everyone changes at their own pace. By everything I mean relationships (with others and yourself), work/study, housing, the body, parents, etc. For me this was a lot, but I tried to make sense of it using my camera and through writing. At the start of this project I recorded voice notes to talk about what was keeping me up at night. I noticed that this started to change—what kept me up at night at 20 was my boyfriend and how stupid he was, my graduation project, and that teacher who was an asshole.
When I turned 21, I was talking more about my roommates and how parties and social gatherings were costing me more and more energy. Skip to 25 and I was talking about the housing crisis, the complexities at work, and missing my friends who had moved away.
At 20 I blamed my parents for who I was; at 25 I reconnected with my parents and acknowledged that I am an intense person to parent. At 20 I felt really mature—now at 25 I treasure every childlike aspect that I own. There is an intense growth that happens in those five years, and it's easily overlooked and only looked back on when we are 50. I tried to notice all the changes while they were happening. This also made me realize that everyone grows at their own pace.
This means losing a lot of people and gaining people elsewhere. The book that I published, "on growing up", talks about different areas of growth during these years.
Q: You often photograph yourself. What does the camera give back that reflection doesn't?
A: It's a way to look back. The photos show something that I maybe hadn't even realized at the time I took the picture. Maybe that was a hard truth that I wasn't ready to face at the time, or it was something beautiful that I couldn't see in the moment. I'm a highly sentimental person as well, so oftentimes I romanticize the past. Being able to look back at photos helps me shape a clear memory about a certain time in my life, combining the good and the bad.
Q: How do friendship and intimacy show up differently in your images?
A: They are very closely tied to each other. I don't think it shows up that differently, because I experience a lot of intimacy in my friendships. My first publication, "know me", is all about this.
Does intimacy take on another form depending on the relationship, or is it about the intensity? When I started looking very closely at my relationship with my best friend and the relationship between me and my partner at the time, I noticed that it's a different form. There is, of course, the difference in sexual intimacy, but there was also a different feeling. This was hard to capture. The book is a visual investigation about this subject, and people always view it differently. Some people see the book and say it reminds them of their sister, others their partner or their friend. So I think I shoot it, and the picture reflects how I feel, and I cannot control how other people's backgrounds and relationships alter the way that they view the same picture.
Q: What changes for you when you're behind the lens versus in front of it?
A: Behind the lens I'm in control. I often take photos of things I find beautiful on the street or if the light hits a subject just right. I always carry a small film camera in my pocket, just in case there is a ray of sunlight that decides to make something mundane very special. If I'm taking self-portraits, there is this sense of calmness around me. I see a picture in my head—sometimes I see a reflection of myself somewhere and the light does something interesting. If this picture is in my head, I need to make it reality, and it's a lovely process of getting there. If someone else takes a picture, I'm horribly awkward and insecure.
Q: You work with both still and moving images. What decides the format?
A: If I work with moving images, it's because I want to learn something from it. I haven’t worked with video a lot. When I did, it was because I couldn’t quite grasp what was happening in my photos.
I did a video study on voyeurism called "understanding intimacy".
I made two nearly identical videos with me (naked) and a female (fully clothed), but I changed the angle and the interaction between the two. This changed how comfortable people felt when looking at somebody being naked. I didn’t understand why some photos were easy to look at and others made the viewer take on the role of voyeur. At first I wanted to take stills from the video to make sense of it, but the video itself had a way stronger message.
Q: Has documenting your life helped make sense of it, or just shown how hard that is?
A: A bit of both. I think that the initial drive is to make sense of it, but looking back it has also shown me some parts of reality that I couldn’t really face at the moment it was happening. Just like I said in a previous answer, it is a way of capturing a complete memory, showing the good and the bad.
