- About -
personal journey
A life shaped by place, people, and time
I first came to Indonesia in 1988 as a biology student, conducting a field study on primate behavior in Gunung Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra. What began as academic curiosity soon became something else. The time spent in the forest, living simply and observing closely, changed how I looked at the world.
After graduating in the Netherlands, I briefly pursued a PhD in animal behavior in the United States. But by then, I knew my path lay elsewhere. I returned to Asia, and never really left.
From science to journeys
Since 1990, my work gradually shifted toward travel, nature, and culture in Asia, organizing and leading specialized eco and adventure expeditions across Southeast Asia.
These years were not only professional, they were formative. They meant long periods in remote places, time spent with wildlife and local communities, and learning to see destinations not as products, but as lived environments shaped by history, nature, and culture.
Later, I moved into roles in hospitality, working in marketing, technology, and digital platforms. Yet even during these more corporate years, my spare time kept drawing me back to what had always mattered most to me: Asia’s nature, landscapes, and traditional cultures.
Photography as a way of remembering
Photography gradually became more than a tool. It became a way to immerse myself — and to remember.
Rather than chasing images, I am drawn to moments that unfold naturally: gestures, light, atmosphere, and the relationships between wildlife and their habitat, people and their surroundings. Many of the photographs I value most are not dramatic scenes, but quiet ones that carry a sense of presence.
Photography, for me, is a way to return to places and encounters that matter. A way to write memories without forcing them.
Long relationships, not quick visits
Some places remain visits. Others become part of one’s life.
Since the early 1990s, I have maintained long-term relationships with communities in different parts of Asia. The most profound of these is with a Mentawai family on Siberut Island, where I was welcomed and adopted into their uma. Over decades, this relationship evolved from travel into family ties and shared responsibility.
That connection eventually grew into a separate long-form project dedicated to documenting Mentawai culture and daily life in depth. Because that work deserves its own space, it lives on a separate platform:
Where I am now
Today I live on a plantation in the mountains of Bali, learning about farming and spending much of my time exploring wildlife, cultures, and landscapes across Asia and, increasingly, southern Africa.
I organize a small number of carefully curated journeys each year to places that require time, patience, and trust to access. These trips are shaped by long experience and a preference for depth over speed.
Photography remains the thread that connects it all — not as a profession, but as a way of observing, remembering, and sharing.
A simple intention
This site is not a portfolio in the commercial sense. It is a collection of journeys, encounters, and moments that felt worth preserving.
If the images or stories here slow you down for a moment, or make you look at a place or culture with more curiosity and care, they have done their work.
Toine IJsseldijk (Yusuf)
