His second project, Opulence (2013-ongoing), followed the suicide of his brother, a young polysexual man who dreamed of escaping Curaçao’s strictures and homophobia to follow Dustin to Europe. In his grief, Dustin began documenting the LGBTQ Ballroom scene across Europe. Through this, Dustin was imagining and experiencing the community his brother would have found if he had made it there, while finding a community for himself in the process. The project is dedicated to his late brother, and its wide ranging success is both homage to his legacy as well as a fight to beautifully make visible a resilient and inspiring community that faces relentless repression and violence. Opulence has grown into a fluid, ever-expanding, living archive of feelings, gender expressions, and LGBTQ identities across Europe. The tender portraits are unadorned, raw, deeply human and, of course, opulent.
Dustin has exhibited widely. Opulence was exhibited as part of ‘The People’s Parliament of Rojava’ (2018-2019) at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and was exhibited as a solo show at Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam (2019) and the Van Abbemuseum (2020). Group shows include: Rencontres de Bamako: African Biennale of Photography in Mali, the preeminent photography event on the African continent (2019), where Dustin was the first Black Dutch Photographer to participate, Lagos Photo Festival in Nigeria (2019), Aperture Summer Open: Delirious Cities and Labs New Artists III at Red Hook Labs in New York (2019), Photo Vogue Festival at BASE Milano, where he also exhibited at Leica Galerie (2019), and the Encontros da Imagem in Braga, Portugal where he was a finalist for the Portfolio Review Award, he also received an honourable mention for the Benrido Hariban Awarad (2020) and a nomination for the FOAM Paul Huf Award (2021).
Awards include: Decade Innovation Award by the Ministry of Social Affairs and the United Nations (2017) the Selection Of Dutch Photography award (2019) of which Dustin was the first Black winner, the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Humanity award judged by Magnum photographers (2019), Berry Koedam Award (2020) and won the Prix des Public at the ‘35th edition’ of Villa Noailles in Hyères (2020).
His photographs have been published in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Magnum, Vogue, fluter, Blau Magazine, Glamcult, Vice and Der Greif.
He was selected by the British Journal of Photography as One to Watch (2019) and Foam Talent (2020). He was a finalist for the Villa Noailles Hyères ‘35th edition’, Somfy Photography Awards at Paris Photo (2020), Joop Swart Masterclass (2020) and The New York Times Portfolio Review (2019).
Thierry’s work is held in the following permanent collection’s; the Van Abbemuseum, FOAM Photography Museum and Nederlands Fotomuseum.
Upcoming projects will take Dustin to Africa, Asia and back to the Caribbean.