Many years of making portraits of artists, resulted in an exhibition in the Photography museum "Den Tempel" in Sittard.
Apart from this Henk Thijs also has had different assignments for theatre and ballet companies to make journalistic photography. Among others he worked for the Ballet van Vlaanderen, the ‘Nationale Toneel‘ in The Hague and the Stadttheater Aachen resulting in publications in newspapers and weekly magazines like the Volkskrant, NRC-Handelsblad, Vrij Nederland, the Gazet van Antwerpen, der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung and more.
After this period his preference moved to candid photography: trying to catch the beauty of the ordinary and coincidental contrasts, instead of creating a surrounding. Give meaning to the daily life of people by eliminating them of their environment. The great variety of subjects were a challenge to look for alternative print techniques. To come closer to the impression given by the image Henk Thijs chooses nearly forgotten techniques like (brom)oil, gum and cyanotypes. The possibility of using colour, in a very restricted way, enables him to achieve the impression he wants .
Due to the increasing role of automation , using digital techniques was unavoidable. First to create the necessary large negatives for the oil- and gumprinting, and after that the switch to so-called giclee prints: inkjet prints made by permanent pigment inks on 300 grs self-coated aquarel paper, an interesting extension to the 'alt-processes'. Exhibitions in Sittard(Nl), Luik(B), Lille(F), Beek(Nl), Apeldoorn(Nl), Heerlen (Nl), Herzogenrath (D) , Vaals(Nl) and october 2009 Durango (USA)