Case report
THE BERT TEUNISSEN EXHIBITION DOMESTIC LANDSCAPES: CROATIA IN EUROPE IN THE ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM IN ZAGREB
Lada Dražin-Trbuljak
; Muzejski dokumentacijski centar, Zagreb
Abstract
The occasion prompting a viewing of the exhibition Domestic
Landscapes: Croatia in Europe by the Netherlandish photographer
Bert Teunissen in the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb
was particularly special, for the opening occurred on the eve
of Croatia’s accession to the European Union.
This well-known and much appreciated photographer exhibited
a series of his characteristic panoramic photographs that
were shot here, in Croatia, as part of a larger whole that he
started making almost sixteen years ago, throughout Europe,
in Japan and elsewhere, and which according to the predictions
of the artist will one day turn into an archive of almost
eight hundred photographs. The photographs have contained
one simple theme shot in the same very simple and always
similar manner, with a result that is equally interesting every
time to those who look at this works.
Teunissen shoots interior settings, on the whole kitchens and
sitting rooms, and the people who live in these settings. With
modern digital means, he is just continuing the 350-year-old
painting tradition of his well known countrymen, master
painters, masters of light and domestic interiors. In the photos
of the series of Domestic Landscapes, one can see the same
meticulousness, systematicness and above all the same respect
for light, whether it is parsimonious, soft or prodigal and
luxurious as in Vermeer, de Hooch and others.
At the exhibition Teunissen presented in addition to these
domestic landscapes of ours spaces shot in the same way
in other European milieus. We travel, rather in the way that
Xavier de Maistre travelled around his room, our imaginations
imparting new contents to ordinary objects, evoking memories.
We also, as we look, roam around in our recollections
of the similar kitchens and living rooms that we have lived
through. We look at and check out all those mighty, numerous
or, on the contrary, elsewhere reduced in numbers, objects
that are quartered in these spaces and search in them those
that are perhaps like some things of our own or, perhaps, are
completely different. Apart from this subtle look at ordinary
things that can be found more or less in every home, perhaps
there is also the more banal and down to earth, less poetic
and more humanly inquisitive kind of looking. In any case, the
photographs awaken in the viewer a certain deal of voyeurism,
awaken curiosity about these alien lives and their ways
of living. It is always interesting to us to see, even if from a
distance, how life goes on elsewhere. Perhaps for all these
reasons the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb was the most
suitable place for the showing of these pictures, where they
were able to arouse a particular curiosity not only in the regular
but also in the expert public.
Keywords
Fotografija; Etnografski muzej u Zagrebu; Teunissen, Bert
Hrčak ID:
174258
URI
Publication date:
3.2.2015.
Visits: 1.129 *