Intimacy Without Borders. The Photographs of Bertien van Manen

A photograph by Bertien van Manen pulls viewers into an unknown environment from where it doesn’t immediately release them. The borderline between seeing and experiencing more or less dissolves in her photos. They don’t really show a definite subject, but rather an atmosphere, an impression. Showing is already saying too much, for the voice of the photographer is so intimate. She takes us by surprise. In a quiet, unemphatic way, she tells a story that has many dimensions, all elusively fanning out.