Bertien van Manen
Pushkin Street 55, Odessa

Bertien van Manen visits places and countries that Western photographers generally visualize in a stereotypical manner or see as exotic. She, on the other hand, goes there in search of the everyday.  “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 I recognize it when I see it,” she says. And: “Never photograph the first thing that strikes you.”

When she travelled through the Soviet Union, in the years the union is collapsing, she presented its residents as if she was one of them. That is characteristic of her empathetic way of working. The images from Eastern Europe reflect the rough, dreary, and stubborn circumstances there, but through the gestures and looks of the people and the colours of their clothing, they take on a certain beauty. The photo of Pushkin Street, Odessa, with women on the street in the Ukrainian port city, is a typical example of this.

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.”