How many people have ever crossed the threshold of a trailer? Who knows how the residents live? Probably hardly anyone. Yet, there are all sorts of ideas about the morality and culture of people living in a trailer park. People who traveled around and had no fixed place to live or stay have traditionally, and to this day, been associated with poverty, begging, and crime.

Life at the trailer park (Van ’t kamp ) is a photography project about the invisible, closed community of a trailer park in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Of a world unto itself, with free spirits without a labor contract or civic duty, own unwritten rules, own professions, own taste, and culture. The photographs don't primarily depict the poverty and oppression experienced by trailer park dwellers; instead, they capture their remarkable resilience and determination to create meaningful lives. I combine my images with personal archival photographs of the residents to make a tribute to an often misunderstood and vanishing culture.

Suzanne Valkenburg (Netherlands, 1981) graduated in photography (MFA) at St. Joost School of Arts in Breda (NL) and is a documentary photographer. From a background as a visual artist, she makes unremarkable worlds visible with her long-term projects and photo series. No flat, overly stylized images, but striking, pure images. Both autonomously and on commission, she shares her images with people who are looking for real and pure images. Her photo series ‘Life at the trailer park’ is also captured in a self-published book ‘Als een vogel zo vrij’ (As free as a bird) and exhibited at various exhibitions at home and abroad.