Bertien van Manen - Let's sit down before we go

Photo reports from journeys to Russia, Moldavia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Tatarstan and Georgia.

22 Mar 2012
24 Jun 2012
  • 17:30
  • foam
  • Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam
    • By
  • foam
  • +31205516546

More than 60 photos will be on show, created between 1991 and 2009. Intimate and sometimes tender photos resulting from Van Manen's personal and sincere relationship with the people she met on her journeys. This humanistic approach makes photographer and subject equals and the mutual respect is palpable.

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Vlada in the kitchen. Kazan, 1992 - Bertien van Manen, Let's sit down before we go. Bertien van Manen

With:
Bertien van Manen

Opening

Opening: March 22th, 17.30PM by Hubert Smeets.

Let's Sit Down Before We Go

The title of the exhibition, Let's Sit Down Before We Go, refers to an old Russian custom: before you leave on a journey, take a moment to think about where you come from, where you are going and why. This was also the case for Bertien van Manen. Since 2010, she has travelled far less due to her personal circumstances. So she took time to look back on her projects and travels. Together with English photographer Stephen Gill, she sorted through more than 15,000 negatives. She was surprised to see that time had nearly stood still: life outside the big cities seemed to have changed hardly at all in her photos.

Bertien van Manen

Bertien van Manen started out as a fashion photographer - and she still has an eye for detail and pattern - but inspired by Robert Frank's book The Americans (1958), she decided on a more documentary approach. For a time she photographed in black-and-white, but she changed her style radically in the early 1990s. From that point on, she travelled with great regularity through Eastern Europe and Asia. Her many travels and intensive contact with the people she met resulted in the book A Hundred Summers, a Hundred Winters in 1994. A logical follow-up was East Wind West Wind (2001), which was shot in China. In 2005 Van Manen published Give Me Your Image, comprised of photos of interiors in which the residents had placed a private photo of their own. Let's Sit Down Before We Go (2010) is her most recent photo book. The character of this book is less documentary than her earlier books and therefore allows more room for the viewers' imagination.

Information

Let sit down before we go, by Bertien van Manen can be seen from 19 March to 24 June 2011 at Foam. Open daily 10 am - 6 pm, Thurs/Fri 10 am - 9 pm. Tickets: € 8,50.