Gluckauf
Bertien van Manen
Bertien van Manen (born 1942) is a Dutch photographer. She grew up in Heerlen, the centre of the eastern part of the former Dutch coal mining region, where her father worked as an engineer for the State Mines. Inspired by Robert Frank’s The Americans she travelled around photographing what she saw.
Gluckauf focuses on a recurring subject in her work: life in mining communities. It brings together photographs Bertien van Manen made in different mining towns: Wakefield and New Sharlston, Yorkshire (UK, 1970s), Most (CZ, 1980s), the Appalachian Mountains (US, 1980-1990s), and Apanas, Siberia (RU, 1990s). Gluckauf is the greeting with which miners across national borders wished each other a safe return from underground.
The subject of the lives of miners’ families has a direct link to Bertien’s own background. The rise and fall of the Dutch coal mines and the associated fate of the region is a universal and modern story. Until 1960 the Dutch coal mining region grew into one of the most prosperous areas of the Netherlands. The Dutch mines were closed in stages from the late 1960s. Less than a decade later half the workforce was sitting at home: unemployed, declared unfit to work or retired early. West Yorkshire, the Appalachians and the Dutch coal mining region are all comparable as post-industrial transition areas, which are having to reinvent themselves in the context of global societal developments.
The bulk of the pictures in Gluckauf centers on people. An exception are the pictures of Most, a town in former Czechoslovakia. It had to be completely demolished to make way for the construction of a mine. The photographs show an desolate landscape devoid of people.
Bertien van Manen primarily photographs people in places around the world where political and social changes are taking place. She captures individuals, families, friends, colleagues and lovers in her photographs often in the comfort of their home, with an eye and feeling for intimate habits and shared traditions. No heroic scenes with demolition hammers and sweaty black coalminer’s faces, but everyday mining life: the street, their kitchens, children playing, miners playing with their children and parties.
Little is explained. Although there are extensive notes by the photographer from her trip to the Appalachian Mountains. We see work where you can see that the photographer cared deeply for the people in front of her camera. Instead of treating them as raw material for her work. In As It Was Give(n) To Me, also about the Appalachian Mountains, Stacy Kranitz makes an effort not to give the impression that she is taking advantage of poor people. To avoid, what she calls, poverty porn. Bertien van Manen shows how easy that can be sometimes.
The presentation of the photographs by Hans Gremmen deserves extra attention. The simplest solution was chosen. The material is presented as separate groupings in chronological order. So the first group of pictures are from Wakefield and New Sharlston in the UK. There are short sections of different material that are placed in between most of the groupings. There are contact sheets between the pictures from the UK and the pictures from the Czech Republic. And between the pictures from the US and Russia are handprints by Bertien van Manen. All in all it is a nice book.
Gluckauf
Photographer: Bertien van Manen
Publisher: Fw:Books
Published in 2023
Hardcover, 24 x 29 cm, 168 pages
Texts: Bertien van Manen, Marcia Luyten
Shortlisted for the Author Book Award 2023 at the Les Rencontres de la Photographie festival in Arles