Mind Mirage Photobook - An ode to queer imagination
Mind Mirage is more than a photo book.
It is an intimate journey through identity, desire, and self-reflection — a visual ode to the queer community and the power of imagination.
In Mind Mirage, I explore how inner worlds and external realities intersect, blur, and sometimes collide. The images exist in a dreamlike tension between vulnerability and strength, softness and confrontation. Each photograph acts as a fragment of a larger inner landscape: a mirage made of emotions, memories, and imagined futures.
The queer gaze as a starting point.
Queerness in Mind Mirage is not presented as an explanation or a statement, but as a natural perspective. The bodies, gestures, and gazes move beyond heteronormative expectations. They are fluid, fragile, sensual, and elusive — much like identity itself.
This photo book invites the viewer to look without judgment, and to create space for ambiguity. For everything that refuses to be fixed or defined.
No longer interested in reading, check out this short two and half minute video where I tell you everything about the photo book. Click down below.
Between dream and reality
The images in Mind Mirage feel almost cinematic, as if you are leafing through stills of a story that cannot be read linearly. Light and shadow play a crucial role, concealing as much as they reveal. What is real and what is imagined remains intentionally unclear.
This layered visual language reflects the mental space many queer people inhabit — a place where fantasy can feel safer than the outside world, and where resilience and self-awareness are formed.
Exploring the Chapters of Mind Mirage
Mind Mirage is not just a photo book — it’s a journey through visual and emotional landscapes, structured around distinct chapters that each offer a different perspective on queerness, imagination, and identity.
1. The Mind
This opening chapter dives into introspection and self-reflection. Through autonomous series, The Mind explores the inner landscapes of thought, memory, and emotion. Shadows, light, and framing mirror the complexity and fluidity of queer identity, inviting viewers to inhabit the mental space of the subjects. In this chapter you will find series such as; Snap Dysmorphia, Just Stop Oil, and Suspension. The series are accompanied by project texts.
2. Sensitive Obscurities
In Sensitive Obscurities, ambiguity and subtlety take center stage. Images in this chapter dwell in moments that are quiet, hidden, or just out of reach — gestures, textures, and fleeting expressions that evoke vulnerability and intimacy. The works in this chapter are created with five other queer artists, and we are researching the inner works of these members. The works connect with a feeling of anger, loneliness, and abandonment.
3. Queer Joy
A shift in tone, Queer Joy celebrates freedom, play, and expression. These photographs are vibrant, tender, and alive with energy, capturing moments of authenticity, movement, and connection. This chapter embodies the exuberance and resilience of queer life, highlighting joy as both personal and political.
4. Behind the Scenes
Here, Rik Versteeg offers a glimpse into the creative process. Behind the Scenes shows the making of the images: the studio, the materials, the experimentation. It’s a reminder that each photograph is the result of careful craft, thought, and a willingness to explore the unknown. This chapter bridges the world of the artist and the viewer, showing how vision becomes reality.
5. Photographs
All the photographs visisbile in the book named and numbered.
6. Epilogue
The Epilogue offers reflection and closure, bringing together themes of identity, imagination, and queerness. It leaves space for the viewer’s own interpretation and invites continued contemplation long after the book is closed. The chapter reinforces the idea that queer experience is not fixed, but a living, evolving journey.
A tactile art object
Mind Mirage is designed as an object to be held, experienced slowly, and returned to. No scrolling, no rush. The book asks for presence and attention, encouraging repeated viewing and reinterpretation — each time from a different emotional state.
Who is Mind Mirage for?
This photo book is for anyone who resonates with themes of identity, longing, and freedom. For queer people, allies, art lovers, and collectors who value autonomous, honest, and poetic visual storytelling.
Mind Mirage is an ode to everything that remains undefined — and therefore powerful.
To check out the book please visit this link.
