Heist (Collaboration with Ronin de Goede)

Photography, Zine

Frans drives because driving is the only thing he knows how to do.
It’s not a job. It’s a condition. Something happens when you’re behind the wheel.
Time warps. The city stretches,
buildings becoming silhouettes, streets losing their names.
You forget who you are. Or maybe you remember.

He keeps the engine running. Always running.
A heist—a stupid idea cooked up in the dead zone between midnight and morning.
There’s no plan, just adrenaline and the texture of leather gloves against the wheel.
The bank is generic. The cash feels fake.

But the thrill? The thrill is real.
It lives in the rearview mirror,
in the women he picks up after.
Passengers who don’t tip, who don’t care, who barely even look at him.

One of them had said: “Freedom’s a myth. The only real escape is surrender.”
She was drunk, laughing,
the word escape slurred into something soft and unrecognizable.

But Frans believed her.
He thought he could escape—the city, the debts, the endless parade of polished faces selling themselves for scraps of applause.
Instead, he’s cornered.
Boxed in by the sharp-edged smiles of the women who see through him.

They come and go, leaving the car full of their things:
lipstick tubes, broken earrings, cigarette ash, business cards for exhibitions he’ll never attend.
One of them takes his keys.
Another takes the car.
The last one doesn’t take anything but leaves him emptied out anyway.

And then, there’s nothing.

No car. No ride. No streets. No money. Only the hum of the city folding,
an unmarked map crumbling in his hands.
The women are still out there, somewhere, everywhere,
driving the night deeper into itself,
leaving Frans on the side of something he can’t name.

He stands there for a long time,
watching the taillights dissolve into a horizon that doesn’t exist.