Domestic Landscapes

Posted by Fabio 23 September 2009

In 1996 Bert Teunissen started to make a series of photographs that were made in houses that still have the ‘old and antique available daylight’. This is a series of photographs about a certain atmosphere that Bert knew from his childhood.

The work is made in Holland, France, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy, Great Britain and Japan and will find its continuation around the world.

Here Bert uses available light to photograph people in their kitchen, livingroom or bedroom. It is a search for a way of living that has been around for centuries and that is disappearing from society fast, due to architectual changes but also because of new regulations in the EU and other parts of the world.

The light that is being used is the same that was used by the great Dutch masters like Vermeer and Pieter de Hoogh in their paintings and the photographs of Bert have been related to the works these painters ever since.

This series was the international break-through for Bert and his first show in New York was in september 2000.

In the spring of 2007 a book about the project was published by Aperture in New York. The book ‘Domestic Landscapes – A Portrait of Europeans at Home’ has won 2 international prizes:
The PDN’s Photography Annual 2008, and at the same time it won the Book Award of PX3: Prix de la Photographie Paris.

www.bertteunissen.com