Grit and gifts: How Henk Jan tells stories of two worlds

“If you want to be a police officer in Holland, you go to Amsterdam, we always say.” And that’s exactly what Henk Jan Kerkhoff did. At the age of just 17 he put on the uniform of Politie Nederland and began his life’s career. In those early days of the job, he knew he would need to be resilient and open to every challenge policing presented, but could never have predicted how much he would have to rely on that adaptability.

He began on street patrol in the De Wallen area of Amsterdam, learning police work “the hard way”. But it turned out to be a life he was born to and in his nearly forty-year career he has been both a detective and a firearms and technical instructor for the riot police, spending hours at a time at the shooting range with his students. But then, five years ago… “I got tinnitus. The worst you can get,” he says, with characteristic cool-headedness. “The police doctor told me I wasn’t allowed on the shooting range anymore. And it’s always hard when you can’t do something you love, that’s your passion, anymore.” He moved into the communications team, which is responsible for the important task of telling the stories of the force, both to the public and its many employees.

“I knew a little about editing, which was why they wanted me there. But during the pandemic my chief asked me to head out and take photos of rioting in the city’s Museumplein.” This was way out of his comfort zone, but Henk Jan, as you will see, never shirks from a challenge. He returned later with the requested images, and, to his astonishment, his boss was thrilled with the photos. “All I did was put the camera on automatic. I didn’t even edit them. But they wanted more, so I had to learn how to use it!”

Thankfully, in his spare time, Henk Jan worked as a sports commentator for the TV network, Eurosport and often met professional sports photographers. “They taught me everything,” he laughs. “It felt like when you’re a teenager and you learn to drive. Eventually it becomes automatic. So, now, when I pick up my Canon camera, I don’t have to think about it.” Since then, he has gone from strength to strength and rarely leaves home without a camera (“I even have another, smaller, Canon camera so I can take one everywhere!”) and his policing images are used in all sorts of places. “Last year we put about fifteen on billboards outside our headquarters. It’s a main route to the centre of the city, so thousands of people saw them and they were really impressed.”

His commentating work also took a hit after he received his tinnitus diagnosis and he was particularly sad to have to stop doing this for Fonds Gehandicaptensport (The Disabled Sports Fund), a non-profit that works to ensure everyone with a disability has the opportunity to participate in sports. “The director asked, ‘is there anything else you can do?’ Of course, I offered to take photographs instead.”

He was assigned to an event called the Handbike Battle, an endurance sport for people with disabilities where athletes ascend the Kaunertal Glacier in Tyrol, Austria, using only their arms. Around 130 handbikers completed the 20km course that has an elevation of 867m, which takes not only sheer physical power, but a strength of will that Henk Jan never tires of capturing. “It's really, really impressive, even for me,” he says. “And I'm a hardened police officer. But I’ve seen so much emotion, so much determination. I’m alone in the mountains, working on these pictures and I see it all – a young man who was paralysed in an accident only a year ago. A daughter shading her mother from the sun as she climbs the mountain. A former pro cyclist who had to switch to handbike. I make myself invisible during their most emotional moments.”

This is a skill in and of itself. Henk Jan has a gift for knowing just when and where to be, with a natural understanding of what will make a story that people will want to explore and spend time with. “It’s never a snack,” he explains. “I want to keep people’s interest for far longer than that.” He remembers every moment of each shot, the context, light, people, what happened before and after, the way it felt and how the image was received. He is visibly moved when he speaks of the way the athletes respond to seeing his photos for the first time. “Because Canon gave me a SELPHY printer and paper to use, I am able to print photos from the event and display them in the athletes’ hotel – then they could take them home. It’s so impressive because it’s really high quality and it’s a memory for life. You could have it on a computer, but this way you can put it on a wall and see it, then you always get that feeling of ‘I did this’. I think that’s very important.”

When you see these images, it’s extraordinary to think that just five years ago Henk Jan had never even picked up a camera. But when life threw him a curveball, he caught it without even blinking. The word for this is grit. He understands perseverance and passion and recognises it in others. It drives him to give his time and skill so generously to the athletes he captures and brings out his best when he takes startlingly authentic images of his police colleagues at work. “I didn’t go to photo school, but I learnt from the best,” he says. “And I would sit at my computer watching YouTube videos until four in the morning because I didn’t know how to do something. Like in sports, it’s the winners who say, ‘I can’t do it, but I will do it.’”