On a sidewalk in Rotterdam, I found a large discarded stack of slides - dusty Kodak boxes filled with nearly a thousand photographs, abandoned among other discarded belongings, moments away from being destroyed by a garbage truck. Unable to let them be lost, I took them home.

Later that day, after the garbage truck had passed, I noticed small remnants still scattered on the pavement - a prayer card, run over by a car, its paper textured with the imprint of the street; a broken Christmas ornament; a mourning card still sealed in its envelope; a torn dictionary page where the word 'boedel' - estate, belongings - stood out like an omen. I gathered them up, like an archaeologist collecting fragments of a forgotten life.

The slides revealed journeys to faraway places - temples, markets, oil rigs, vast deserts. But what intrigued me most were the self-portraits: a man, always alone, carefully positioning himself with a tripod - reading on a terrace, leaning against a tree at the Taj Mahal, tenderly crouching beside a flower bed.

Who was he? Did these objects belong to him? What was his story? And what remains of a life when even its carefully preserved fragments end up on the street?

In 'Phantom Traces' his self-portraits intertwine with the found objects. Photographed against colored backgrounds reminiscent of archival pages, they become relics of an unknown life - tangible yet elusive, like memory itself. Together, they form a quiet meditation on memory, loss, and what we leave behind.