The black and white analogue impressions of natural settings by Dutch artist Awoiska van der Molen (1972) have intrigued many. A wall of dark sea, a valley of old pine trees, the infinite foliage, they appeal to our inner, deepest intuition, capturing the raw essence or meaning of life. Her images reflect her personal experience of the primal psychological space. Though her works are made in dark tones, these shades and blacks radiate warmth and a comfortable feel of belonging. No matter how devastating the landscape. Slowness. Quietness. Being part of earth.
In her most recent series, ‘The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves’, van der Molen looks at Japanese windows as if they are compositions of matter; of light and darkness. As with her natural landscape photographs, each work in ‘The Humanness of our lonely selves’ has a certain monumentality and tranquility. These illuminated windows express both a longing for connection and a sense of existential loneliness. A familiar sense for all of us. The windows, which offer a glimpse of life without allowing full contact, are central to this dialogue between distance and proximity.
Carbon prints
As she silently traverses the darkness, Awoiska van der Molen captures the hushed world behind and around the windows. Her photographs demand slowness. Slowness during the creation of the image. Slowness in its materialisation. Slowness in viewing the results. The darkroom is where Van der Molen allows her images to slowly appear again. Acclaimed for her gelatin silver prints, she chooses a printing process for the illuminated windows that is new to her, the 19th century carbon print. Because the carbon print – a transfer technique – is so complex and labour intensive, it is hardly used anymore. Executed with the lamp black pigment (soot), it is one of the most durable printing techniques. The pigment and gelatin carry the image that lies in a thin layer on the paper, with the thickness of the layer determining the degree of darkness or light. The carbon print has an exceptionally long tonal range, allowing the diverse dark to light shades in the windows to be optimally realised.
PARIS PHOTO 2024 BOOTH A55
At Paris Photo FLAT // LAND is honoured to show the carbon prints from the series ‘The Humanness of our lonely selves’, together with some earlier works from Awoiska van der Molen’s oeuvre. Since the carbon prints are highly exclusive, printed as 3 editions only, van der Molen decided to handprint a silver gelatin edition of 7 of the works of ‘The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves’. These will be slightly larger than their carbon counter parts and will be framed differently.
Please visit us in Paris, Grand Palais, Booth A55 from Wed 6 November (vernissage) – Sunday 10 November, 2024.
The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves
Critically acclaimed for her psychological landscape images, Awoiska van der Molen presented a new body of work this year at Huis Marseille, museum for photography Amsterdam: understated black-and-white photos of built-up environments that reveal traces of human presence. She zooms in on illuminated windows in the darkness of the evening.
Van der Molen encounters these windows while she is photographing in Japanese nature. From a distance, the photographer becomes aware of the daily activities behind the windows but without life truly revealing itself to her. Instead, the windows display patterns of shapes in shades of black, white, and grey. At the same time, that shadow play instills mystery into things, since the opaque-frosted glass subtly but resolutely obscures the interior world from view.
One could say that these illuminated windows function as a screen between the photographer (or the observer) and the world, between a psychological inner world and the external world of things. Through the windows, we catch a glimpse of the life behind them, yet there is no substantial contact.
The windows serve as a barrier to the desire for safety and companionship as well as offer a glimpse of it. They simultaneously represent the longing for connection as well as comfort with distance. In this sense, the windows symbolise the existential loneliness that most of us must come to terms with to a greater or lesser degree.
Van der Molen’s photographs – both the window series and nature works – can be seen as psychological spaces. For instance, her black-and-white landscape images taken between 2009 and 2021 are more than just a record of the physical characteristics of an expanse. During solitary walks in the remote wilderness, Van der Molen attempts to penetrate the essence of a place. Experiencing the return to what is at the core of existence – our deeply-rooted relationship with the earth, its cyclical rhythms, the cosmos of which we are part – is where her nature works are born from.
Awoiska van der Molen
Awoiska van der Molen (1972) is a Dutch artist working with the medium of photography. She was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Award in 2019 and In 2017 for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. She was the recipient of the Larry Sultan Photography Award 2017 in San Francisco and was awarded the Japanese Hariban Award in 2014. In 2011 she was a finalist at the Hyères Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in France.
Her new publication, ‘The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves’, is shortlisted for this year’s Paris Photo / Aperture ‘Book of the Year Award’. Her first monograph, Sequester, was nominated for the Paris Photo/ Aperture ‘First Book Prize’ in 2014. Her second book, Blanco, was published in 2017, followed in 2020 by The Living Mountain.
Her work is represented in museum collections worldwide including Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Photography, Seoul; Fotomuseum The Hague; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; and Foam Amsterdam.
Awoiska van der Molen studied Architecture and Design followed by Photography at Minerva Art Academy Groningen, Netherlands. In 2003, she graduated with an MFA in Photography at the St. Joost Academy, Breda, Netherlands.