BEYOND THE IMAGE
BERTIEN VAN MANEN AND FRIENDS
Exhibition — 29 Feb until 9 Aug 2020

An unusual tribute to an icon of documentary photography, the Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen.

The Stedelijk Museum pays an unusual tribute to an icon of documentary photography, the Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen (The Hague, 1942). Although her work has been collected for decades by museums like the Stedelijk, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, this will be the first major survey of her oeuvre in the world.

The work of Bertien van Manen is well represented in the Stedelijk collection. It is a highly autobiographical visual diary, in which she mirrors, examines and rediscovers her life in different ways, in those of others. Many of her series are long running projects for which she revisits places and people and develops close relationships with communities throughout the world. In close liaison with Van Manen, the exhibition will combine each of her series with the work of another photographer, fourteen in total, including Nan Goldin, Boris Mikhailov and Rineke Dijkstra. This offers a counterpoint to Van Manen’s work, providing it with a broader context, emphasis, contrast or counterbalance.