Bertien van Manen

Bertien van Manen (Den Haag, 1942) is a Dutch photographer.

Biography

Van Manen grew up in a Dutch mining community in the 1950s^[1] and began in 1977 as a fashion photographer, after studying French language and literature at the University of Leiden. She uses an inexpensive snapshot camera to take photos of the people she meets because she feels that toy cameras allow her subjects to remain at ease.^[2]

Inspired by Robert Franks' book "The Americans", she travelled to Budapest an New York and became a photographer. Van Manen had her first photo exhibition in The Photographers' Gallery in London. She worked on commission for long running projects, such as "A Hundred Summers, A Hundred Winters", which features photos of the former Soviet Union, "East Wind, West Wind", which has photos from China, and "Give me your Image", which has photos from Europe. Her 2014 work, 'Moonshine', features photographs of miners in Yorkshire and the Appalachians.^[1] These projects are featured in books and international exhibits. She has received many prizes for these works.

Her photos can be found in such collections as: La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Parijs,^[3] Fotomuseum Winterthur, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum of Modern Art New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, SF Moma San Francisco, Centre national des arts plastiques Parijs Frankrijk, The Metropolitan Museum of Photography Tokio Japan, The Baltimore Museum of Art USA, la Salle Chicago e.a.

Selected works in public collections

• Rijksmuseum Amsterdam^[4]

Publications

• 1994 A Hundred Summers, A Hundred Winters, pictures of people from Russia.
• 2001 East Wind West Wind, pictures people from China.
• 2006 Give me your Image, Photo's of photo's in Europe^[2]
• 2011 Let's sit down before we go
• 2013 Easter and Oak Trees^[5]
• 2014 Moonshine^[1]

References