BERTIEN VAN MANEN – BEYOND MAPS AND ATLASES
2016-02-29“At first, working in Ireland I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. My husband had died. I dispensed with the people and reflected on the atmosphere. I was guided by a feeling and a search, a longing for some kind of meaning in a place of myths and legends.”
Bertien van Manen, September 2015.
This is the artist’s first body of work produced in Ireland and traces her journey across the island over the past year and a half. During her visits she stayed in the homes of strangers, mostly other photographers living across Ireland, who became friends with van Manen and made work alongside the artist. While travelling she became immersed in Irish literature and was guided by the words and landscapes of Seamus Heaney, John Banville and John McGahern as much as the people she travelled with.
Bertien van Manen is known for her poetic and intuitive style of photography, capturing intimate and spontaneous moments on a simple snapshot camera. Relying on chance encounters and accidental discoveries van Manen portrays an Irish landscape that is at times otherworldly in its beauty and raw in its savagery. She penetrates the private worlds of her subjects and renders contemporary Ireland as a place shrouded in mist and ghosts.
Exhibition runs through till March 19th, 2016
Belfast Exposed Photography
The Exchange Place
23 Donegall Street
BT1 2FF
Belfast
