I’m a Hastings-based artist working with image and text, exploring the potential of visual storytelling in print.
I experiment with historical and contemporary photographic processes, I write and produce artist’s books, each unique in approach and form.
My work responds to contemporary and historical events, often through the lens of the lived experience. Violence is a theme I explore throughout my work. Recent work addresses climate collapse and pollution. Plastic particles in my testicles (Negative Press London, 2025) is a personal response to microplastics pollution inside human bodies illustrated by plastic analogue positive film photography alongside new writing.
Books from my press Negative Press London (www.neg-press.com) are in international collections including Museum of Modern Art Library, New York, US; Wellcome Foundation Library, London, UK; National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK;
Artists’ Book Collection, Bavarian State Library, Munich, Germany; and Bibliothèque Musée Français de la Photographie, Bièvres, France.
Some Queer Animals (Negative Press London, 2023) – Shortlist 2024 Author Book Award, Arles Les Rencontres de la Photographie. Shortlist EI2024 Photobook Award, Braga, Portugal. Finalist Photobooks Photofrome 2025, Frome, UK
The Spots That Never Went (Negative Press London, 2018) – Highly Commended Finalist of the 2019 Cornish Family Prize for Art and Design Publishing, presented by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Exhibitions include Photofusion, London; Bruce Castle Museum, London; La Mécanique Génerale, Arles, France; Winchester Gallery, Winchester UK; Foyles Gallery, London; Dutch Centre, London; Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge; Bury Art Museum, Bury; and Marginal Arts Festival, Roanoke, Virginia, US.
My writing appears in short fiction anthologies, journals and academic publications.
Graduating in 2019 from Cambridge School of Art, my MA Fine Art show was awarded the Cambridge Artspace Residency.
roelofbakker(@)mac.com
@roelof_bakker
www.neg-press.com
CV ︎︎︎