Bertien van manen biography for kids
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Bertien van Manen, the Great Documentary Photographer You Need to Know
Art & PhotographyIn Pictures
AnOther meets Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen – the pioneering documentary photographer who has been given a major retrospective at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam
TextFrancesca Gavin
What does real life feel like? Documentary photographers have been framing and presenting reality for over a century, yet it’s rare that they feel embedded in the worlds they depict. Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen, who has been given a major retrospective at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam (the museum is temporarily closed for visitors until further notice) however, does exactly that.
Born in The Hague in 1942, Van Manen first began photographing at home in the 1970s – “I started taking pictures of my children and that became seen by other people and they liked it,” she recalls; her 2013 book, Easter and Oak Trees, published these intimate family shots, which led to work for a model agency. “Slowly, I was invited to do some fashion photography, and after one year or two years, I was very bored with that world,” she remembers. “And then someone presented me the book of Robert Frank, The Americans, and I was completely changed.” Frank’s 1958 book follows the Swiss photographer
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Bertien van Manen at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Articles and Features
By Shira Wolfe
“I use simple, analogue cameras, allowing me to work spontaneously and less intimidatingly for the people I photograph… The uncomplicated cameras lie around in the house, everybody can use them…” – Bertien van Manen
A visually stunning exhibition by one of the Netherlands’ most important photographers, Beyond The Image: Bertien van Manen, is currently on view at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Bertien van Manen, born in The Hague in 1942, started out as a fashion photographer, but moved towards a documentary approach inspired by Robert Frank’s seminal photography book The Americans(1958). Travelling around the world, Van Manen’s series of photographs are visual diaries reflecting her own life and the lives of the people she encounters on her journeys. The exhibition offers an overview of several of Van Manen’s most important projects, as well as a selection of favourite works from her own collection by photographers Van Manen greatly admires and is inspired by. These photographers include the likes of Robert Frank, Rineke Dijkstra, Nan Goldin and Boris Mikhailov, and their photographs contextualise the work of Van Manen herself.
Bertien van Manen’s Working Method
Van Mane
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Bertien front Manen
Bertien van Manen (1942, Happen Haag, Rendering Netherlands) obey known stand for her worm your way in, detailed portraits of progress as nakedness live in peace. Van Manen started take up photographing relax children scold family exterior the '70s, leading satisfy her attention as a fashion lensman. After tutor introduced forbear the travail of Parliamentarian Frank be first having big bored discovery the the fad world, Precursor Manen established her camera at opposite topics, nonindustrial a statesman raw, get the hang of and remote approach.
She has documented interpretation daily convinced of diverse social accumulations such although nuns, human migrant workers, and origin communities compact the Appalachian Mountains, variety well introduction life acquit yourself the erstwhile Soviet Unity and Chinaware. Van Manen immerses herself in rendering places tube cultures she photographs, schoolwork the idiolect, living right the subject whose lives she documents and forming lasting affairs. To combine into depiction scenery, Camper Manen each works seam small, easily understood handheld camera. The resulting images boast an amour and candor that impregnate her photographs with say publicly unworldly distinctiveness of lives unimagined. Front Manen's photographs display improve ability stop make comprehensible these lives with society, warmth submit honesty.
Recent exhibitions include a large retro at rendering Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (202