Mieke Van de Voort
Been reading up on inspiring photographers. Here's one from "reGeneration 50 photographers of tomorrow". Mieke Van de Voort shot a series "People who died alone." She allows us into the private lives of the recently deceased. Carried out in collaboration with Amsterdam social services, the project shows the interiors of the apartments just as they were found by social workers who were researching the identity of people who had died without any known friends or relations. within the context of a wider examination of the isolation and anonymity that affect city-dwellers, Van de Voort tries to preserve both a physical and spiritual trace of people forgotten by the world, who died in complete solitude.
I was so intrigued by her work that I researched a little and found an email regarding her thought process and opinions about the houses she shot. Managed to scan in the pictures from the book to share with everyone :)
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hi. I am writing to you from Amsterdam.some thoughts I have concerning the struggle with possesion of objects and illusions if you want.
in one of my artprojects I have searched for people that live isolated from society. They have died in Amsterdam and had no-one to take care of their funeral and other affairs that need to be sorted out after death. Instead, a department of social services does the job. I took photographs of the interiors of their houses, more or less in the state they left it when they died. When one looks at these images it is easy to think that they have resigned from society and given up on order and structure in their own lives as well. The rooms certainly don¹t look like the inhabitants were expecting any visitors. most of the houses were quite a mess. the messes differed in quality.for example: many 'pretty' things like little sculptures and paintings and furniture, nicely displayed though too many to be able to appreciate,gathering thick layers of dust.
or: a mess of construction elements such as wood, paint, tools etc. at acertain point in time the diseased had started to rebuild the interior of his house (perhaps in a moment of excitement. a start to reorganise life by making the personal environment look better, changing things beginning with the living room in order to have a more pleasant surrounding and to change one's inner life by changing the reflection of it in the way things are ordered). but somewhere the realization of good intensions had got stuck and what was first only a mess of transition became a permanent landscape. The new interior looked appocalyptic, so what did it matter if to this mess ashtrays and bottles and trash were added?. in the bedroom I found a walkietalkie on a blackened pillow, half-finished paintings and a halfempty bottle of milk.
or: a house with 4 rooms each of them stuffed with things piled up inmountains along the sides and in the middle. thousands of collected items impossible to retrieve because they have disappeared under another thousands of items.
sometimes my own appartment starts taking on similar features. too manythings inhabit my space. intimidating chaos. I start to sort them out and strand in the process because I can't decide on what to do and because the items bring on memories or trigger trains of thought that I can't stop and I forget what I was doing. so many unfinished stories, where is the beginning, what were my plans? the mess around me increases the mess inside my head. I forget who I am. how did these things ever enter my house? who was I when I brought them in? how did I become so fragmented?
some of the houses I photographed were very empty. on the wall only a cutout newspaper photograph of the previous queen, nothing more personal than that.
I used to have a friend long ago who only possessed as many things as she could carry by herself.
I once read an excerpt of a novel, I think it was Paul Auster's, where the protagonist creates structure in daily life by organising things in terms of colour. for example: monday's dinner: only green foods. tuesdays dinner: only orange etc. limiting choice by colour. or is it 'directing' rather than limiting choice?
artificially setting preferences to have a basis to act on. what kind of framework do you use in daily life? live by the rules of the Q'ran? make art that cannot be sold? have seven sets of clothes that are identical so you don't have to think about what to wear? only travel to places that are in walking distance? never watch tv, only movies? etc
In one of the houses I found a Mount Everest on the kitchentable of unopened mail and most rooms were inaccessibly stocked. It seemed as though this person had been living like a reckloose among remnants of the past and was in denial of the existence of an outside world. But when I looked moreclosely I found out he had all this amateur broadcasting equipment and had kept a diary of whom he was speaking to in which part of the world. Although he lived in a capital city with nearly one million people in his proximity, it seemed he chose to have contact with people merely from a distance, in a non-physical reality. Or was it a choice?
I have a specific relationship with newspapers. I am never able to read them for more than a few days in a row. but I don't throw them away because I think I might still read the bits that I didn't cover and the ones I didn't read at all beacuse I am sure there are lots of interesting things inside.
by the time the pile grows larger than myself and falls over, I start negotiating to get rid of it because I get tired of restoring the pile each time a tram comes by and not having read the papers and adding more to it. the passing of time is manifested in the pile and I dont find reconciliation. I end up throwing them away or making some silly artpiece out of them, always with a sense of loss. the newspaper as a mirror of how I thought life would be and how it turns out to be. a collection of possibilities gone, of opportunities missed.
I once told a southafrican guy about the relationship I had had with mySouth african husband. I told him why we broke up and that I couldn't deal with his desillusions and that being desillusioned had broken him down and that I was another contribution to the collection of desillusions. hereplied that it was the stupidest thing in life to be desillusioned because one shouldn't have illusions in the first place. I felt upset.
in one of the houses I found a note on the wall, saying:
'and when I am dead
dont be sad
for I am not really dead
you should know
it is only my body
that I left behind
dead I am only
when you have forgotten me'
I wondered if anyone else but him had ever read that note and if there was anyone to make sure he wasn't really dead.
up to here for now. I have to start tidy up things!
regards, mieke
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People who died alone... hmm.. food for thought. Perhaps a little too profound and heavy on thoughts today.
Labels: inspiration
posted by Mary at
6:27 PM
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