For most guys approaching the big 2-0, life is a series of pleasant experiences, safe routines and adventures to be had. For Derek Van Oss, however, circumstances took a slightly different turn. One morning, while driving to work in his hometown of Dallas, he began to experience blurred vision behind the wheel of his vehicle. Shaken by the near-collision he'd narrowly avoided as a result, Van Oss did the only sensible thing in his situation. “[I] then went to an optometrist,” he explains. “[The doctor] checked my eyes and told me everything was fine with them. Then he gave me one of those, ‘You might want to sit down for this,’ talks.” His optometrist informed him that while there was nothing technically wrong with his sight, something may have occurred within his cerebrum. “Turns out, I had unknowingly had a hemorrhagic stroke that had been caused by a messed-up artery in my brain which I may have been born with,” says Van Oss, “and that was that. Ever since then, half of my vision in both eyes is completely blind—[My condition is] called a homonymous hemianopsia. Now, for most people, blindness would be a tough pill to swallow and certainly rock a well adjusted person to his or her core. But for this Texas native, his diagnosis on that fateful day would prove to be a challenge unimaginable. You see, Van Oss is an artist and photographer. The entire world as he knows it is predicated solely on the use of his eyes.
At an early age, Van Oss was able to parlay his love of visual arts into a profitable venture. His interest in graphic novels and their fantastic characters and lore led him to one of his first gigs as a comic book “inker.” He even managed to find work with some of the top names in the industry. “I loved inking comics, though I was never any good at penciling them,” he admits. “I miss doing it, but I've not run into another group of guys who were looking for an inker ever since. Back then, I used to speak--through e-mail--with Joe Quesada [current editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics] and his regular inker, Jimmy Palmiotti who were working on their own studio project [Event Comics] at the time, and he told me I should stick with inking--that I could have a career in it ahead of me much like my inker heroes Alex Garner, Karl Story, Tim Townsend and Scott Williams.” But Van Oss’s initiation into photography—his one true love--occurred serendipitously. “It happened in my senior year of high school in an advanced placement art course I was taking. Our assignment was to make a pin-hole camera. I probably rolled my eyes at the idea--I was mostly only interested in illustration and design at the time--but once we got moving with the project, I couldn't stop being excited about photography. It all really came together for me when they put us in a darkroom to develop our prints,” he says. Now, at age 27, Van Oss is a sought-after headshot and production photographer, capturing publicity stills for a number of respected motion pictures. He’s also photographed a wealth of famous names: Alyssa Milano, Danny Glover, rapper Lil' Wayne and even noted academic Noam Chomsky, to name a few. He combines his gritty, edgy aesthetic to portraiture resulting in emotionally evocative imagery that keeps people coming back for more. “I'm endlessly fascinated by human behavior and psychology, how we act and react, why we do the things we do, what motivates us and what inspires us to be who we are. That is what I love to explore with photography," he explains. Van Oss shares this passion with his idols, Anton Corbijn, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Berenice Abbott. Art will remain his life blood--both in the form of his photographs and the paintings he creates in his leisure time. Considering the long fight back to the fortitude of his youth (through intense physical rehabilitation as well as the support of friends and family), Van Oss is at the top of his game. " I wasn't sure if i'd ever be able to compose a photograph properly again," he says. "My brain has marvelously adapted to looking through the viewfinder of a camera, despite being severely visually impaired."¤
At an early age, Van Oss was able to parlay his love of visual arts into a profitable venture. His interest in graphic novels and their fantastic characters and lore led him to one of his first gigs as a comic book “inker.” He even managed to find work with some of the top names in the industry.
