For about ten years, the Dutch photographer Bert Teunissen has been photographing interiors from a slowly disappearing world. Houses, usually in rural regions, built before the world wars, before electricity and running water were introduced into human life; and their inhabitants, nearly always members of the older generation, often scarred physically and emotionally by a life of manual and low income, but always radiating a calm dignity.
The motives for the series ‘Domestic Landscapes’, which have now appeared for the first time as a book, lie partly in Teunissen’s own biography. He writes in the introduction:
“Domestic Landscapes is my quest for the special light and atmosphere that were so familiar to me when I was a small boy, and that still exist in this world. Because I am sure that they are fated to disappear, […] I would like to retain them for my children, and yours, to get acquainted with.”
When photographing, Teunissen always uses only the natural light that falls through windows into a room. This moves his work rather unconsciously – without it ever having been his intention – close to the realm of the genre and window pictures from the golden age of Dutch painting, from painters such as Jan Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. But ‘Domestic
Landscapes’ is about more than just light, room and atmosphere; it also says something about the life-styles and customs of pre-industrial Europe that have all but disappeared:
Domestic Landscapes is also about identity and originality. Every area of the world has its own distinctive culture, which is expressed by its customs, language, cuisine, and all kinds of traditions. The inhabitants of the houses I photograph still know how something should taste, how it has to be made; they understand the importance of time and maturity, they know the meaning and value of repetition – every day, every year …”
There is little to add to Teunissen’s own representation. ‘Domestic Landscapes’ is a fascinating journey of discovery from the first to the last page, a book in which time seems to have stood still, the documentation of ‘another’ Europe beyond that of big city society, economic growth and great visions of the future. “I simply have to take these photographs. There is no way I can, or want to, resist the need to do so,” says Bert Teunissen.