Bert Teunissen - Domestic Landscapes
Le 2011-10-04 20:11:04

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Domestic Landscapes ­ A Portrait of Europeans at Home One day in 1996 while visiting Castelnau in the south of France, the Dutch photographer Bert Teunissen (born 1959 in Ruurlo) chanced upon an old café where the sunlight on the veranda was shining into a large kitchen with red and white floor tiles. Fitted out with simple furniture and an open hearth, the atmosphere in this room instantly conjured up the rooms of his childhood, and the house he was forced to leave at the age of nine because it was to be demolished. The photograph of the old lady who has assumed her place in the middle of this ambience was to be first of a sustained series that has now occupied the photographer for over ten years and grown to number more than 350 works. The title Domestic Landscapes points not only to the almost panoramic format of the works, which always show a whole, but also to the kinds of rooms that are formed by a specially cultivated domestic setting, in which the protagonists spend the majority of their lives: living rooms, kitchens, work rooms. Since Castelnau, Teunissen has set out to find more such rooms, which distinguish themselves in that they all manage with natural daylight, having been built before electric lighting was properly installed. In the meantime, this search has taken the photographer to nine European countries. In point of fact there can be no mistaking the regional differences in the iconography of the everyday objects. It is also evident that the things that are grouped around the inhabitants of these rooms have long since established their own set places in these domestic landscapes. They are unshakeable elements of an ambience that conveys a duration that cannot be thought of in linear terms, but comes from the constant repetition of daily routine. In keeping with this, Teunissen's photographs may be compared with the paintings of Vermeer or Pieter de Hooch. The inhabitants, mostly older people, look at us with calm composure, their gazes containing the amassed experience of life spent far from the metropolises. Teunissen looks for these gazes, for they mark the spiritual middle point from which the cohesion of the ambience radiates. As clearly as the photographs describe the regional differences, it is just as surprising how much light they cast on the points in common of a generation in Europe that was born before World War II, and that helped to construct the new Europe. Rooted in country life ­ and worlds apart from the burgeoning EU farming regulations - it is also a generation on the verge of disappearance; their children and grandchildren have long since made their homes elsewhere and adjusted to the globalised economy. Seen in this light, Teunissen's series Domestic Landscapes is a priceless archive of European life prior to globalisation, which is etched into the collective memory of our times. For Theunissen's first-ever exhibition in Germany, some 60 photographic works will be exhibited in Haus Esters; a richly illustrated catalogue will be published for the occasion by Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld, with texts by Saskia Asser and Bert Teunissen. The exhibition has been supported by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in Berlin. Theunissen's archive can be viewed at www.bertteunissen.com

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