Bertien Van Manen

Bertien van Manen, Dutch (1935-2024)

Van Manen was an acclaimed Dutch documentary photographer known for her deeply intimate, empathetic portraits of everyday life across the globe. She initially studied French and German literature at Leiden University and began her career as a fashion photographer in Amsterdam in the 1970s. However, after discovering Robert Frank’s seminal photobook The Americans, she abandoned commercial work to pursue a personal, candid style of documentary photography using small, unobtrusive cameras.

Rather than acting as an objective or detached observer, van Manen immersed herself in the lives of her subjects, spending long periods building relationships with individuals and families in their private homes.

Her key photobooks include:

• A Hundred Summers, a Hundred Winters (1994): Photographs documenting daily life across the former Soviet Union shortly after its collapse.
• East Wind West Wind (2001): An intimate look at people and domestic spaces across China.
• Give Me Your Image (2005): A project capturing personal photographs displayed inside the homes of ordinary European residents.
• Let's Sit Down Before We Go (2011) & Moonshine (2014): Explorations of Russia and Appalachian mining communities in the United States, respectively.

Van Manen’s work is held in major international public collections, including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. She passed away in May 2024.

‍