I’m a visual artist and writer who makes artist’s books and unique paper-based artefacts. Working with historical and contemporary photographic processes, printmaking and collage, I also explore reproduction and appropriation as tools of my making and look for new connections in my photography archive.
Originally from the Netherlands, I’m based in Hastings, UK.
Much of my work relates to bodies: diseased bodies, missing bodies, polluted bodies, traumatised bodies, queer bodies, violent bodies, bodies lying by the side of the road, bodies in love. My books are bodies.
Recent projects address wildlife, nature, climate collapse and the violent relationship of humans towards the natural world and to ourselves.
Books are published by Negative Press London (www.neg-press.com), an imprint I established in 2012.
• Some Queer Animals: Stories Of Roadkill (Negative Press London, 2026) is book of the stories behind 16 portraits of British wildlife killed on the road or found dead in the landscape of one English village; a follow-up publication to the 2023 book Some Queer Animals.
• everything is so very much connected (NPL, 2025), with Sarah Bodman, collates collages and writing created during our mail art correspondence, responding to topics relating to nature, the environment and climate collapse.
• Magnificent Bodies (NPL, 2024). A box set of photographs of dead insects are hand-printed at an enormous scale to highlight the demise of flying insect numbers in the UK while showing the magnificent beauty of individual insects.
• Eighteen Years Old (NPL, 2024). A tabloid newspaper of photographs of broken trees and writing without punctuation recalls the evening a gang of queer bashers set out to attack me, also paying tribute to my unknown gay saviour. In the collection of the National Poetry Library, UK.
• Some Queer Animals (NPL, 2023) collates life size postmortem contact printed cyanotype portraits of British wildlife killed on roads and in the landscape of one English village, the process of making proposing a mutually caring relationship with wildlife and nature, to nurture not destroy. Shortlist 2024 Author Book Award, Arles Les Rencontres de la Photographie, France. Shortlist EI2024 Photobook Award, Braga, Portugal. Finalist Photobooks Photofrome 2025, Frome, UK
Negative Press London books 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; Bibliothèque Musée Français de la Photographie, Bièvres, France; Artist Book Collection, Bower Ashton Library, University of West England, UK; National Poetry Library, London, UK.
Exhibitions include Photofusion, London; Bruce Castle Museum, London; La Mécanique Génerale, Arles, France; Winchester Gallery, Winchester; Bower Ashton Library, Bristol; Foyles Gallery, London; Dutch Centre, London; Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge; Bury Art Museum, Bury; and Marginal Arts Festival, Roanoke, Virginia, US.
Graduating in 2019 from Cambridge School of Art, my MA Fine Art show was awarded the Cambridge Artspace Residency.
My writing appears in short fiction anthologies, journals and academic publications.
roelofbakker(@)mac.com
@roelof_bakker
www.neg-press.com
CV ︎︎︎