Hendrik Kerstens

In the 17th century Dutch painters began to create informal paintings that focused on the features and/or expressions of anonymous people. These were called tronies. Although a tronie showed a person’s face, it wasn’t considered a portrait. A portrait, in that era, was a commissioned painting that displayed an often idealized likeness of a person of a certain social position. It was almost always entitled with the subject’s name and was intended to be preserved for posterity. After all, a person who could afford to have a portrait painted was a person of stature and their portrait, even if it appeared informal, was an expression of their social status.

A tronie, on the other hand, wasn’t commissioned. They were the painter’s personal works. They gave the painter an opportunity to experiment, to work on different sorts of expressions and try new techniques. Tronies tended to focus on the subject’s face and often included outlandish garb. Unlike portraits, which were titled after their subjects, tronies were generally given generic titles, like Rembrandt’s An Oriental or Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.

In 1995 Dutch photographer Hendrik Kerstens began a series of tronies featuring his daughter Paula. Although the individual images are given generic titles (in keeping with the tronie tradition), the entire series is named for his daughter: Paula Pictures. This series won the prestigious PANL Award (Photographers Association of the Netherlands).

Kerstens daughter was, in effect, the model of greatest convenience. Although he has photographed other people, his best work…and his most successful gallery showings…has all featured Paula. It was his great luck to father a child with such a classic Dutch face.

Despite the fact that the subject is his daughter, Kerstens acknowledges that he can never truly know her…neither as a parent nor as a photographer. But he can approach her as a photographer and with a photographer’s eye. Using her as his subject Kerstens frequently re-creates the sorts of poses and the angles of illumination found in the work of the Dutch master painters. There is a subtlety of light at work here, a delicacy of tone that is altogether painterly.

Kerstens’ interest in 17th century painting is grounded in its celebration of the ordinary. He says it “can be read as a description of everyday life, as opposed to the paintings of the Italian Renaissance, which usually tell a story.” He is also intrigued by the pre-eminence of craftsmanship over sentiment during that era, and his photographs reflect that. His work is almost scholarly in approach; cool, detached, disciplined.

The nude image below is as much about light and line as it is about the human body. Kerstens focuses on the technical aspects of the image, which results in a sort of impersonal, austere beauty. The way the subject’s face and body are illuminated is as studied and formal as the studies of light found in still life paintings.

Even when modern artifacts are included, the images retain an aura of antiquity. Through his control of light Kerstens is able to turn a hoodie into a wimple. The photograph below is almost like a lesson in how to use light to create beauty. Yet Kerstens maintains that his work isn’t about beauty; he says the contradiction between beauty and ugliness “disappears the moment the soul is touched.” His work, he has said, is about the soul.

I’m not sure how Kerstens reconciles his fascination with craftsmanship and his notion that his work is about the soul. I’m not sure I see much of the soul in his photography. I’m not sure what the soul is, or if it exists. But I recognize beauty…and it’s here in abundance.

I’m very much taken by these photographs. They’re so simple, so still, and so intimate. But I can’t help wondering…would they be as successful with another model? Would they work as well without the heavy-lidded intensity and clarity of Paula’s gaze, staring directly into the lens…directly at the viewer?

I’m inclined to think there is a special, intangible alchemy at work here. The relationship between father and daughter, between photographer and subject, between past and present, between tradition and modernity, between craft and art, between light and shadow…they all seem to have coalesced in this series of images.

Maybe these photographs really are about the soul.