Portraits with friends

This project first appeared at @ma3ke@hachyderm.io on 2023-11-07.
This article was created on 2026-06-09.

One November night in 2023, my friends and I took some very good photos in my living room. The goal for the photo session was to shoot a great committee photo (Cardozo 2023, Usva). This involved draping ourselves over my deep red velvet sofa while dressed in fun outfits we put together from random items.

I’m on a red sofa, black sheer top, pink pants.

Black and white portrait of me looking off to the side. — Some cool black-and-whites.

Black and white portrait of me directly looking at the camera. — Some cool black-and-whites.

Crop of me within a pile of friends. I used to do an excellent job with my eye make-up.

We ended up shooting a really cool commitee photo and we had a lot of fun. I remember it was me and my committee members, and the then-girlfriend of one of them. She took the group photos of us. I think you can see her hand with the gold-metal bracelet and pastel blue sweater in the first photo.

The harsh, tacky, flash-pastel look is gnawing at me again, lately. I think I want to experiment with it again. Recently I got a small flash I can put on the hotshoe of my Z6, so I'll certainly play around with it.

The Cardozo committee is part of Usva (the cultural student center of the University of Groningen) and organizes an award show every September that highlights stage arts performances from student groups in Groningen. We would go and see most shows put on by student arts associations and review them. This included choirs, theatre, dance, orchestras. I was part of this committee for about four years and I met some dear friends through it. Seeing all those performances and discussing them together was such a special part of my week. I am very, very grateful I go involved.

The lesson here is that you should go to cool art things with your friends and talk about it and you will make new cool friends doing it. Or at least, you'll have a good time. Or a terrible time when you go see a horrid play. But that is also part of the fun. If you're a student in Groningen, go and see if there's cool things you can do at Usva.