Bertien van Manen

Bertien van Manen (1942, Den Haag, Netherlands) lived and worked in Amsterdam. Van Manen began by documenting her own family in the 1970s before working as a fashion photographer. After encountering Robert Frank's book "The Americans," she shifted toward a more raw, spontaneous and personal approach. Her methodology involved immersing herself in communities, learning languages, living alongside her subjects, and using small handheld cameras to maintain an unobtrusive presence. "People felt less threatened by them," she said. "You're with a guest who also takes photos, rather than with a photographer who's your guest." Her subjects included nuns, female migrant workers, mining communities in Appalachia, and ordinary life in the former Soviet Union and China. She published 10 collections of her work, including A Hundred Summers A Hundred Winters (1994), East Wind West Wind (2001), Let's Sit Down Before We Go (2011), Moonshine (2014), and Archive (2021).

Van Manen taught part-time at the St. Joost Academy Breda and at the Rietveld Academy Amsterdam.

Solo exhibitions include Gluckauf, Schunck, Heerlen (2023); Let's sit down before we go, Hamburg Werkstatt Fotografie, Hamburg (2022); Hidden in another world, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2021); wish i were here, FoMu, Antwerp (2020); Moonshine, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2019); Bertien van Manen: Archive (1970–2021), Enter Enter - A Space for Books, Amsterdam (2018); Galerie Robert Morat, Berlin (2016); In camera, Paris (2015); HE.RO, Gabriel Rolt, Amsterdam (2014); Beyond the Image. Bertien van Manen and Friends, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2013); FOAM, Amsterdam (2012); Galerie Robert Morat, Berlin (2011); Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York (2009); Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich (2008).

Group exhibitions include Defender, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin (2020); I am a native foreigner, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017); George Eastman Museum, Rochester (2016); The Thing Itself, Yancey Richardson, New York (2015); Moscow Biennale, Moscow (2012); This Infinite World, Fotomuseum Winterthur (2011); New Photography, MoMA, New York (2005); Hidden in Plain Sight, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2004).

Her work is held in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Fotomuseum Winterthur; and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, among others.