Bertien van Manen

Having studied French language and literature in Leiden, Bertien van Manen (b. 1942, The Hague, the Netherlands) began a career as a photographic model, but it very quickly seemed to her that it would be more interesting to stand behind the camera than in front of it, and so, from 1977 onward, she became a fashion photographer, working for magazines such as Viva.

When she discovered the book The Americans, by the photographer Robert Frank, her photography took off in a whole new direction. From that point on, inspired by this famous example, she turned her camera on the raw realities of everyday life.

Her break-through came with the photographs that she took of the former Soviet Union shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In these photographs she sought out the poetry in muddy villages and grey concrete cities, finding there human dignity, melancholy and – in contrast to the work of Robert Frank – joy. Her style distinguishes itself from other documentary photographers because the people in her photographs appear to feel perfectly at ease with themselves, nothing has been staged or dramatized.

“I never know in advance what I am going to photograph. I am always in search of something, although I never know precisely what it is. But when I see it, I recognize it”, she says, adding, “Never photograph the first thing that occurs to you!”

In keeping with her empathetic way of working, when Van Manen travelled through the Soviet Union, in the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, she portrayed its residents as if she were one of them.
Even now, at an advanced age Van Manen is still travelling. She takes her photographs in colour nowadays, but continues to shoot on film, “because the quality is better.”