This portrait of Cees ‘Ani’ Meerman was taken in a photographic studio, in the heart of Amsterdam, while he was touring through Holland with the band Herman Brood & his Wild Romance. The band had a ‘bad’ image which, I must say, that they endeavoured fully to live up to. Band members took me to the Paradiso club, where we drank champagne till early hours and Herman Brood kept offering me cocaine, which I never took.
For me, this is the document of those hundreds of hours which we spent together on the road. At the time I thought this was a portrait of a person who went too far. Or maybe not far enough. I liked Cees ‘Ani’ Meerman, a vulnerable and sensual man, who probably never found his way out.