Willem Jonkers

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.58.24

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.59.32

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.59.23

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.58.11

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.57.59

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.59.10

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.58.59

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.57.45

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.57.31

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.58.46

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.58.35

Screen Shot 2015-12-31 at 11.57.15

Street photographer Willem Jonkers often hits the streets of Rotterdam in the Netherlands with an ultra-wide-angle 8mm fisheye lens. He then approaches strangers and gets not only close, but low — really low.

His collection of ultra-low, ultra-wide street portraits show a “Gulliver” effect that makes his subjects look like enormous giants towering over each scene. “By going at distances of sometimes less than one foot, my subjects fill the frame completely, but still with a good sense of the surroundings they are moving around in because of the wideness of the lenses I use,” Jonkers writes. “The intended distortion of a fisheye lens makes that framing possible.”

Here’s a behind-the-scenes video showing how Jonkers recently created these types of portraits in the Dutch province of Utrecht:

“By the use of this lens, there’s the need to go extremely close and invade the subjects private space,” Jonkers says. “However, it is my strong beleive that the closer you get, the more profound the viewer’s (and mine) experience will be.”