Mirjam Bleeker and Frank Visser met about twenty years ago in Amsterdam and immediately felt that they found inspiration in the same things. Since then, they have been travelling the world together. They love chance meetings in inspiring places, beautiful but somewhat rough houses and people, adventure and travel. Without a fixed plan, they go to a place that intrigues them, searching for stories – both in words and in images.
More than once, they have found themselves in the homes of interesting people who live in the middle of nature. Some of those houses and habitants were simply too beautiful to keep to themselves. Close to Nature travels across nearly each continent and has stops in Uruguay, Argentina, China, Mexico, Taiwan, the US, Colombia and Italy.
The reader gets to know seventy-something Marco Tagliaro, a painter who moves to his typical island dwelling on the tiny island of Alicudi near Sicily each summer, to work and write there. Close to Nature also travels to Taipei, to the nearly inaccessible studio of architect Cha Cha Zein, and to the house of elderly couple Maya and Dan Szpakowsky in the Rocky Mountains.
Each of the houses get the attention they deserve, in an honest and heart-felt photo documentary in which the photographs get all the space they need. The photographs focus on the unique environment, interior design details and on the inhabitants. This truly is a book with stories to cherish.