Left: Bertien van Manen, Tao in her Dormitory – Fudan University, Shanghai, 1998. Right: Jitka Hanzlová, Untitled (Venus), 1994, Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen, an icon in the world of contemporary photography, has displayed an exhibition at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
The artist expresses through pictures her autobiography in which she examines her life in many different ways and the life of others around her.
Bertien van Manen, Rostov on the Don, Holy springs, 1993, Collection Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam.
Many of her series are long running projects for which she revisits places, like China and Soviet Union, people and develops close relationships.The exhibition holds over 80 photos from various projects, including the donation that Van Manen made in 2013 from her series Let’s Sit Down Before We Go, Give Me Your Image and Vrouwen te Gast.
Seiichi Furuya, Schattendorf, 1981, Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
She started as a fashion photographer. Then, she was inspired by the photobook ‘The Americans’ (1958) to take a different approach.
Left: Bertien van Manen, Kazan, Vlada, 1992. Right: Bertien van Manen, Novokuznetsk, Siberia, 1991. Both from the Collection Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam and Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
The series of pictures is combined with another 13 photographers’ work.
Bertien van Manen, Eva, Sasha and Alosha. Shachunia, 1993.
The exhibition is available until 4th of October 2020 at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Courtesy of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam