The photographs of Rob Nypels (Netherlands, Leiden, 1951) are purely visual, obscure. They do not lend themselves to explication. Let us draw a comparison with poetry. The meaning of a poem is the poem itself. If “it” can be said in any other words, if “it” can be explained in intelligible language, then the poet has failed, or the explicator has not understood the poem.In the same way, a photograph cannot be translated into a logical, verbal discourse. The meaning of a poetic image lies locked within the image; it is a visual meaning, not a verbal meaning. One can write about the ideas and intentions of the photographer, about artistic techniques, about approaches to photography; one can compare the photo to other photos, and by doing so can place it within the whole oeuvre of the photographer and assign it a place in the history of photography. Or one can perform a formal analysis, describing the composition, the perspective, the technique. At best, this leads to a certain dumb truth, but not to the truth of the photograph. Is there nothing then that can be said about the work of Rob Nypels? Of course there is.
Nypels photographs en route. He does not travel in order to photograph, with a definite goal or destination; his travel is a form of observation which results in a collection of photographs. And each photograph itself is a sort of mini-collection, of objects brought together by the frame.
Arrangement is an important characteristic of collection. In Nypels’ photographs the elements are arranged in a way that is related to that of sixteenth century Wunderkammer an Curiosity Cabinets. In these collections, objects of diverse nature were brought together in a – to our eyes – unscientific and pre-museological manner, which left room for amazement and surprise at the beauty, the curiosity or the ingeniousness of the object. In contrast to a museological collection, a collection in a Wunderkammer is always “complete”; there is nothing missing. The objects in the cabinets in a Wunderkammer form a complete collection, a self-contained world, in which every object has its role. They come from the far corners of the world, or from human or animal bodies. What matters is that they all have been isolated from their natural surroundings, and “perform” in a new environment, the collection. This theatrical element is missing from the arrangement of objects in a modern museum. Though even lighting and sterile presentation, a “neutral” environment is created for the objects on display there. People have not yet entirely understood that this neutrality is in fact an illusion.
Source robnypels.com