Arja Hop, formerly working as Arja Hop and Peter Svenson, has been engaged since 2015 in analogue photographic research projects that aim to give a voice to nature, and in particular to the plant world.

Arja Hop (Hierden, 1968) trained at the Academy of Fine Arts St. Joost in Breda and later studied biology and philosophy for one year. Since 2013, she has been researching colours derived from plants growing in specific locations. Peter Svenson ✝︎ (Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1956 – Amsterdam, 2025) studied photographic technology at Wellington Polytechnic in New Zealand and later physics at the University of Auckland before moving to the Netherlands. From 1982 to 2004, he worked as an analogue photo printer in various laboratories in Amsterdam. In 2005, he founded Aap-lab, where the work of many renowned photographers is printed.

Hop and Svenson collaborated from 2015 onwards, sharing a deep fascination with the environment. They found each other as kindred spirits in their interest in experimenting with plants, their natural colours, and analogue techniques in their most elementary form. As Peter noted: “I was inspired by Arja’s meticulous photographic documentation of plants, and together we developed a method to capture plant colours.”