Born 1951 Medan, Indonesia, currently resident Amsterdam.
After studying painting and trying his hand in cinema, Markerink went on to study photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. In 1991 he was awarded the Maria Austria prize.
Markerink's work precisely rendering how Holland has changed over the years, depicted in such themes as post-war housing, expressways and urban planning on reclaimed land, has met with acclaim. Rejecting the stereotyped interpretations and simplistic humanism that the mass media are prone to, he turns his attention to the side-effects that social developments foist upon our visual perception. Markerink continually engages with new forms of expression, both in collaborations with Theo Bart and incorporating singular techniques unmindful of existing forms, such as employing texts by a sociologist or clips from an ordinary family photo album. From 1997 to 2001 he visited Chernobyl, Sarajevo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima and other locations burdened with traumatic histories to produce "Memory Traces". He plans to publish another collection of photography in summer 2008.
Among public collections including his work are the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Wereld Museum in Rotterdam.