Onrustige Studies Annaleen Louwes Mirelle Thijsen's Choice of Photobooks on Care environments and Matters of Life and Death Photography

LOUWES Annaleen : 
Onrustige Studies. Het Vijfde Seizoen, 2003.

In 2003, Annaleen Louwes spent three months at 'Het Vijfde Seizoen'; an artists residence in Den Dolder, The Netherlands. Here she created a series of images that give an impression of the world in which these people live. As in earlier series, 'Het Vijfde Seizoen' shows Louwes' fascination for the way people survive under different circumstances and how this is reflected in their body language.


Annaleen Louwes is fotograaf en sloot haar verblijf in het Vijfde Seizoen af met een prachtige portrettengalerij van bewoners van de Willem Arntsz Hoeve in boekvorm: Onrustige Studies.

Annaleen Louwes in het voorwoord van haar boek:

Lange tijd al ben ik geboeid door hoe de mens overleeft onder allerlei omstandigheden en de weerslag die dat heeft op zijn lichaamstaal. Als fotograaf probeer ik hier vat op te krijgen. Deze zomer werd ik uitgenodigd om met mijn gezin drie maanden door te brengen op Het Vijfde Seizoen, een kunstenaarsverblijf op het terrein van de psychiatrische instelling Willem Arntsz Hoeve in Den Dolder. Dit terrein, bedoeld om de bewoners rust te geven, bracht mij een zomer vol onrust. 


Mijn verblijf dwong mij een stap te zetten in de beslotenheid van de werkelijkheid aldaar.Wat doe ik hier eigenlijk? Hoe laat ik zien dat de lijn tussen mijn wereld en de wereld van de bewoners heel dun is? Hoe te fotograferen zonder dat de beschouwer zich niet een te grote voyeur voelt? 


Het moest geen documentaire worden, maar een impressie geven van deze specifieke wereld via mijn fotografie.
Uiteindelijk vond ik een tiental mensen bereid zich door mij meerdere keren te laten fotograferen. Door dit meervoudig fotograferen ontstond een zekere gewenning, meer vrijheid en daardoor een groter vertrouwen en wederzijds respect.


Zo is een compositie van afbeeldingen ontstaan, waarin de bewoners lijken te figureren in een werkelijkheid die ik hen toedicht. De houdingen zijn soms geënsceneerd, soms vastgelegd zoals ik ze heb aangetroffen. Het werd mijn tijdelijke nieuwe leefomgeving, waar ik als buitenstaander geleidelijk aan deelgenoot van werd. De mensen, mijn modellen, die ik heb gefotografeerd hebben me daarbij geholpen. Ik heb veel van ze gevraagd. Ze hebben me veel gegeven. Onrustige Studies is een selectie foto's uit deze persoonlijke ontmoetingen.
Het zijn schetsen. Studies van een onrustige fotograaf. Lees verder ...

Photobooks on care environments and matters of life and death in post-war Holland: THEN and NOW

This exhibition focuses on the meaning and significance of photobooks concerning health care environments. Heart-rending, intimate stories on matters of life, sickness, death and personal loss, are observed and experienced by consecutive generations of photographers working in the documentary tradition. Martien Coppens (1908-1986), Koos Breukel (1962), Carel van Hees (1954), Rince de Jong (1970), Roy Villevoye (1960), and Albert van Westing (1960) unveil various aspects of the everyday lives of their friends and family, as well as people in their professional environment who suffer from a severe illness or find themselves facing grim adversity. The photographers record how these people, some of whom are very dear to them, try to deal with their illness or misfortune with a need to hold on to memories of a happier past, and to understand their slow deterioration and the bewilderment that comes with it. There is often a great sense of urgency: the clock is ticking.

The world of the loved one, the patient, is turned upside down. Suddenly, life is built around medical care and attempts to find a new sense of meaning and purpose. A new dimension is added to the concept of ‘home’: ‘home’ is no longer a safe and protected place, and consequently the patient no longer experiences it as such. ‘Home’ turns into a health care environment. Simultaneously, a different kind of reality suddenly becomes of vital importance close to home: the care facility. That turns into a new ‘home’ of sorts, in the shape of a transitory location of controlled care and attention. The hospital, the nursing home, the mental institution; they are like hotels – a temporary accommodation, often born out of necessity, sometimes unwanted; a place to meet fellow sufferers. The photographer infringes upon that environment; he/she considers the ‘home away from home’ his/her work environment.

The core of the exhibition is shaped by photobooks published by and on the Dutch public health care. In addition, photobooks on consumer driven health care and loss within one’s domestic circle and circle of friends are put on view, self-published by modern day photographers. Those publications are considered to be an extension of the genre. Within the genre, photobooks since post-war reconstruction constitute a category of their own.

After World War II photographers recorded their fascination of the harsh reality of human suffering in a number of photobooks. Each of the 25 photobooks selected for this exhibition represents a photographer’s strategy regarding the documentation of medical and personal care in public and private space, then and now. Not only do they show the progression of personal tragedy; they also display the development of care environments in The Netherlands, and the birth of a genre in documentary photography. In this exhibition you will find visual narratives on academic hospitals by the first generation of photographers to work in a tradition of humanist photography and who were members of the Dutch photographer’s guild (GKf). Among them are Eva Besnyö (1910-2003) and Ad Windig (1912-1996). Photobooks that were published after the Second World War are composed around the verb ‘to live’. Moralistic and patronizing in tone they speak of nursing and nurturing in a confined workplace; mental bewilderment and daily care; a ‘day in the life’ of a patient in a care environment that tries to mimic a home life. These publications subsequently make way for self-published and digitally produced book projects. The personal involvement reflected in those projects is domestic and local in nature, focused on the photographer’s own environment and family. Books on display by contemporary author-photographers like Linda-Maria Birbeck (1974), Annelies Goedhart (1979) and Jaap Scheeren (1979) reveal that approach.

Photobooks are selected that were groundbreaking in their day and in the way they depict the socially, often highly sensitive, themes of health care in text and images. Further, the books stand out for their technical execution, layout and way of photographic storytelling. In sum, this exhibition is about commissioners, photographers, graphic designers and graphic industry that have played an important role in the history of photography and graphic design.