The Oldest Thing
Ruth van Beek
Ruth van Beek (born 1977) is an artist who uses images from her archive of found photographic material. The primary source for her odd and playful collages are mainly old photobooks: specialist books and magazines of the 50s, 60s and 70s. She intervenes within the pictures. By folding, cutting, or adding pieces of painted paper she rearranges and manipulates the image. It is comparable with the work of Carmen Winant, who also makes collages from found photos. Or the work of Justine Kurland who also has cutted up some of her photobooks. But the work of Van Beek is much more playful.
In her latest book, The Oldest Thing, the first images came from her mother’s recipe folders. Her mother left Ruth three binders with carefully copied recipes and pasted pictures. She supplemented the images from her mother’s cooking notebooks with images from her own archive. A visual pattern of oval-shaped imagery emerged.
Just showing photo’s from the book, as in this post, doesn’t do The Oldest Thing justice. It should be experienced altogether. The book is small and thick, over 500 pages. By placing a series of similar images in succession, over time, a certain degree of saturation occurs. The depicted objects become equal to each other; scale fades and shapes converge.
Visual saturation lies at the heart of Ruth van Beek’s The Oldest Thing. Her collages tell stories through form, colour and repetition. A strange rhythm emerges from the book. A rhythm like that of daily recurring tasks. That may also be the link with the depicted objects.
For me The Oldest Thing remains elusive. There will be people who find it a boring book, full of almost the same pictures. I think the book is incredibly delightful.
The Oldest Thing
Photographer: Ruth van Beek
Published by Van Zoetendaal Publishers
Published in 2023
Hardbound, 16 x 12 cm, 512 pages
Poems by Basje Boer
Shortlisted for the 2023 Paris Photo – Aperture Photobook of the Year