Dutch 'portrait' photographer Hendrik Kerstens's picture Bag won the second prize in the 2008 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize at the National Portrait Gallery. It's a portrait of his daughter Paula, styled liked a Vermeer housemaid and wearing a plastic bag that mimics the traditional Dutch cap (see below). Kerstens was inspired by a trip to New York where he noticed the excessive number of bags being given away in stores, and has created a brilliant, humorous response to this environmental problem. Kerstens is a self taught photographer whose only subject is Paula. He has often photographed her with 'headdresses' made of napkins, bubble wrap, black bags, toilet paper and silver foil and other modern materials. Is this a single joke, repeated over and over, or is there more to Kerstens' work?
Kerstens' portraits of Paula follow the Dutch tradition of 'tronies' - a term given to informal and uncommissioned portraits of people which were executed by painters to practice painting different expressions. As with Kerstens' work they were often given generic titles - perhaps the most famous example is Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring (below) His work also acknowledges the conception of the characteristically 'Dutch Light' within Dutch Master paintings, thought to reflect a uniquely cool, clear light of the Netherlands. Paula is austere, serene illuminated with the self-contained air of those 17th century women. Kerstens' technique is almost 'painterly'
Kerstens says "I take someone today with modern tastes and portray her in the style of the 17th century masters. It's a way for me to shake up the concept of time". Sometimes Kerstens photographs Paula in what looks like a hired period costume. More often he creates that costume, for example in Lampshade, below.
Occasionally he directly references famous art historical works, for example in 'Bathing Cap' which acknowledges David's famous Death of Marat.
As Margriet Kruyver of the Witzenhausen Gallery notes: "Kerstens is conscious of the fact that people are the same, no matter who they are or what age they live in. Any association with a certain age is determined by the way we are depicted: the clothes and make up we wear, accessories and lighting. He is fascinated by this game with time…" Thus a hoodie and a baseball cap are cleverly transformed into not only someone from another time, but even another sex.
In RedRabbit she is absolutely portrayed in the style of a masculine portrait. In Baseball Cap the immediate appearance and expression is that of some young male nobleman or courtier. I particularly like Pullover, below, where she seems to be portrayed as a Muslim woman wearing a hajib. On closer inspection however Paula simply has her sweater pulled up over her ears. It is perhaps a reminder that in Dutch society too it was considered immodest for a woman to show her hair, for many centuries. Time and time again he confounds our visual assumptions and makes us look twice.
"He is fascinated and amazed by the fact that every human being, no matter how familiar, is 'other', a mystery that can never be completely unravelled."
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