Biography

Discussion

Marianne Dommisse can best be characterised as a spontaneous, feisty, and down-to-earth Dutch woman, who is also prone to laughter and averse to any form of dogmatism. She is a lively talker who says what she thinks, is curious, possesses a hands-on attitude, and on occasion, is someone who chooses to stand her ground. At the same time, she can be reserved and is socially sensitive. Although almost approaching her seventies, Dommisse still has plenty of energy and is perhaps even restless. Her photographic work has an effortless quality about it. At first glance, her photos usually appear simple and austere. A highly involved technical printing process nevertheless often precedes Dommisse’s images. Her choice of subject matter is by no means overly complex: what concerns her is a visually appealing, meaningful way of documenting day-to-day reality, and then especially the small, but significant aspects thereof. The main theme is virtually always people and their immediate surroundings, e.g. individuals (at their work), objects for everyday use, interiors, studios and cities, or traces left by man in the landscape and elsewhere. Hierarchy is completely lacking when it comes to her choice of subject matter. From a bottle opener to an material art painting, from children to the minister of Foreign Affairs, from Bedouins to artists: Dommisse has photographed it all, based on the objective approach associated with her profession. Just as with her subject matter, no structure is to be observed in terms of the locations and kinds of media with which she approaches her work. Dommisse has exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, but also at the Clara Hospital in Rotterdam. Her photos have been published in the exhibition catalogues of important museums as well as magazines such as Libelle and Allerhande. With her non-elitist attitude, Marianne Dommisse falls under a special category in the Dutch photography world. While her work has unquestionably received a notable degree of notoriety and appreciation, it still seems to have remained on the sidelines.

Marianne Dommisse has developed herself largely as an autodidact, working as an assistant for a photographer of the Hague School, Lottie Walkate-Grünebaum, a woman who took photographs to make a living, but whose primary interest lay in politics. Walkate would chiefly be known as a co-founder of the Chilicomité (‘Committee for Chile’). On her first working day, Marianne was thrust into the deep end, with no knowledge of photography whatsoever. Having arrived too late, she was resigned to consulting a German-langue technical book and a minimum of oral instructions given by Walkate, who had to rush off for an appointment. While Walkate was out visiting schools, her pupil was printing her first photographs. After this experience, Dommisse never left photography again. She saw virtually no future in a career in agriculture and horticulture, for which she had studied, nor in the boring ‘nine-to-five work’ that she had been doing prior to this time in the ‘stuffy cave’ of the De Kler bookstore in Leiden. Her choice for photography was in fact a negative choice: she could not think of anything better to do. Looking back, Dommisse now considers this practical experience as an excellent learning method, even if she did not find Walkate’s photos particularly stimulating in artistic terms. It drove her—perhaps to a greater degree than she would willingly admit—to seek out a more artistic way to photograph children and other people. Walkate’s approach to photographing children, however, could hardly be considered as extremely orthodox when compared to the work of other photographers: children were not asked to pose and instead photographed while at play or in the school classroom.

Marianne Dommisse, who remained Walkate’s assistant for quite some time, gradually discovered there were artistically innovative photographic alternatives to the general routine that typified school photography. Dommisse got to know Emmy Andriesse’s Van Gogh book via Walkate, who was on friendly terms with Andriesse (among others). This also opened Dommisse’s eyes to other perspectives.

The same applied to the other studies that Dommisse undertook: she learned a bit about technique, but received too few creative impulses. In her opinion, the tempo was too slow and there was no form of creativity or artisticity whatsoever. Moreover, she had mastered many of the photographic techniques already. She learned more from the other departments of the KABK than she did in that of photography. In the visual art section, for instance, she received lessons in composition and perspective from Willem Schrofer and Gerrit Kiljan. She was also inspired during her stay in Paris, at which time she retouched photos of film stars, actors and photo models for Studio Harcourt. In the photo studio of Brassaï, she received several tips from one of his assistants. She met the master only once. On occasion, she and several other people who were interested were permitted to follow him at a distance while he took shots outdoors. For Dommisse, her internship in Paris was particularly valuable because she was able to view a large number of Brassaï’s photos.

Dommisse has very little knowledge with regards to the work of other photographers, preferring to keep herself as unrestrained as possible. Besides Brassaï, she is interested in the work of Cecil Beaton, Bill Brandt, and especially, Izis Bidermanas. Even prior to her departure for Paris, she had purchased the latter’s photobook, Grand Bal du Printemps (Lausanne 1951), produced together with the poet, Jacques Prévert. In the 1950s, Dommisse revealed that she shared a similar preference for subjects as the Parisian: numerous photos of children living in a poetic and painterly decor of exceptionally framed, dreary, impoverished streets. Along with her instructor at the KABK, Gillis van Oostrom, Dommisse found at the time that people in the Netherlands were hardly anywhere near prepared for Izis’ work. The strong block-and-white contrasts, the limited number of grey tones and the absence of the proportions of the Golden Ratio in his work and in the work of those adhering to subjective photography—the movement led by Otto Steinert—were highly unusual.

Steinert’s definition of subjective photography concerned a renewed appreciation for the photographer’s personal input, in which experimentation and the search for new solutions played a major role. It was precisely these aspects that Dommisse incorporated in her work. In the Netherlands, the work of Emmy Andriesse is what speaks to Dommisse the most.

In Marianne Dommisse’s extensive oeuvre—which though recently thinned out, still consists of more than 50,000 negatives—is largely comprised of portraits of artists, writers, musicians, actors, scientists, children, businessmen and civil servants. The advantage of photographing artists, in her view, is that they are frequently not only interesting personalities, but that they are also more open to experimental forms of portraiture. A short unpublished piece that Dommisse wrote in 1961 to accompany a (published) photo reportage in Amateur Photographer provides insight into her thoughts concerning portrait photography. In contrast to the flattering portrait that appeals to a larger public—technically perfect, flawlessly lit, possibly still retouched—Dommisse’s preference is for the portrait that presents not only the character traits that typify the person being portrayed, but also the photographer’s vision. In her opinion, the photographer should have the technique mastered in such a manner that it plays an entirely subordinate role during the actual process of photographing. As such, the photographer can then concentrate solely on creating his vision of the person to be portrayed.

Working in series is especially typical for Marianne Dommisse. During portrait sessions, she often shoots a series of photos that are similar or, by contrast, complementary. Collectively, the photos should provide a characteristic image of the sitter that transcends the time-bound, incidental moment of the shot. For the cover of a book about Jaap Nanninga, a painter in The Hague, published in 1964, Dommisse created a series of six equivalent, more or less interchangeable portrait photos, which were to be printed next to each other as in a film roll. The publisher, however, chose to print each photo separately according to convention: the experiment went no further than idea. Dommisse did go on to realise the concept of a complementary presentation of one person’s portraits. In 1965, she exhibited forty photos under the title Jan’s Cremertorium, at the Amsterdam printing company Sigfried. These photos were from different sessions spread out over a number of years and were designed to collectively give an insight into the person, lifestyle and experience of the painter/writer, Jan Cremer. The exposition showed Cremer’s development from 1957, as a beginning ‘barbarous’ painter in The Hague, until 1965, when he lived as an established writer on the Valkenburgerstraat in Amsterdam. Dommisse’s attempts to create a timeless, characteristic portrait that rises above the incidental moment of the shot, might very well appear to contradict her attempts to follow the same person photographically over a number of years. It is a fruitful paradox that is fed by a great interest in a number of artists. Through her husband, the sculptor, Theo van der Nahmer, Marianne Dommisse has developed a preference for artists and sculptors in The Hague. Besides Cremer and Nanninga, she has made extensive portrait series of artists such as Lotti van der Gaag, Jurjen de Haan, Willem Hussem, Theo van der Nahmer, Aart van den IJssel, and Co Westerik.

Dommisse photographs her figures typically full-frame, centrally in the image, or just outside the photo’s middle axis. She sometimes even introduces an extreme close-up, as with Jaap Harten’s portrait, where his head fills the entire image with a high contrast in black and white. Usually, however, Dommisse portrays the artist in surroundings relevant to him or her, in many cases their own studio interior. This is the case in her recent portrayal of Joseph Semah, a visual artist from Amsterdam, bending with full attention over a drawing he is making, fist under the chin, across from an overflowing bookcase featuring the pictorial and written sources with which he converses in dialogue in his work. A bare lamp fitting with a brightly burning light bulb just above the artist’s head, in another photo from the series, completes the image of the thinker/creator. Dommisse photographed the caricaturist, Jaap Vegter, reflected in a mirror in his living room/library. The symbolism is obvious: we are confronted by a serious man, who taking distance, holds a mirror in front of society. Jaap Nanninga is portrayed as sombre and sunk deep in his thoughts, placed in a chapel-like niche with a crucifix hanging on the wall above his head: an exquisite representation of the artist’s divine inspiration. When viewed retrospectively, it almost seems like an ominous premonition of his untimely death. Strikingly, Dommisse chooses to portray many of the Haagse Comedia theatre company’s actors against the neutral background of a bare wall.

The majority of the artists portrayed are not photographed during their work, but are aware of the camera’s immediate presence. While Dommisse tries to avoid unnatural poses, she does however appreciate it when artists do their best to present themselves in a manner that is special and characteristic. In this respect, Jan Cremer was a photogenic and much appreciated subject to photograph. One moment he would assume the look of a dreadful ‘painting beast’ in an old sweater or a manly, bare-chested lover; next James Bond in a sleek, custom-made suit or a favourite son of the people wearing a cap with a halo painted above him on the ceiling. It should be noted that Dommisse left out the halo above Cremer’s head: she is clearly the one who determines the composition, not the person being photographed. In her portrait photographs, Dommisse likes an expressive black-and-white contrast without too many greys as well as an abundance of backlighting, so as to create pleasing contours. Her figures are often placed in front of a window, with the challenge being to keep their facial features visible. Dommisse is averse to artificial lighting because of its unnatural character: the light that is available must be sufficient. Only in her fashion photos for the couturier Jean Louzac did she permit poses that were obvious and a strong artificial lighting. Finally, Marianne Dommisse’s many children’s portraits cannot go without mention. In addition to her son, Marco, she took large numbers of photos in the 1950s of children at school, on the street and at carnivals. Many of these were published in Het Vaderland. In so doing, Dommisse showed a tremendous empathy in the way children experience the world around them. She captured a small child nervously hanging a candle in a Christmas tree, showed the surprise of a toddler sitting on a policeman’s horse, portrayed the loneliness of a child who is not allowed to play with the other children, and photographed the exaltation and intense interest of children with balloon sellers or at carnivals and puppet shows. These everyday events are seemingly insignificant, but nevertheless carry a tremendous tension.

The portrait also plays an important part in the series on Staphorst, which comprises more than 300 photos. Dommisse had decided to photograph the village after had received a lot of negative publicity. A young man had been forced by the local villagers to marry a young woman he had got pregnant by tying him to a manure cart and pulling it around the village. In order to present a more balanced image of the village and to record its slowly dissipating cultural tradition, Dommisse stayed there for three weeks in 1959 at the home of Stien Eelsingh, a friend who lived in Staphorst. Despite the fact that she had received special permission from the village’s mayor—for religious reasons, photography was strictly forbidden there—Dommisse still sometimes encountered significant physical opposition from the local inhabitants while taking her photographs. In the end, however, there emerged a huge series of black-and-white photographs of both the interiors and exteriors of the farms, working on the land, the Sunday procession, and women and (playing) children wearing traditional attire.

Dommisse continued to supplement her Staphorst series until about 1965, not only with black-and-white but also colour photos. In 1967, preparations for a photobook on Staphorst featuring a short text, to be published by Boom Publishing Company in Meppel, were already at an advanced stage, when legal problems began to arise concerning the placement of some of the photos and the author of the text suddenly died. Subsequently, the book was never realised.

From approximately 1954 to 1960, Marianne Dommisse worked on a series of black-and-white photos of graves and headstones in the Netherlands and France. By using a low-grain film, a high black-and-white contrast, an occasionally not all too sharply focussed camera setting and her choice for run-down graves, covered in moss and overgrown vegetation, the photos that she took had a rough and desolate appearance. This effect was heightened by the absence of people in the photos, excepting an occasional funeral procession. Dommisse was struck by the contrast of a dark cast-iron cross against a sharply bleak sky. She sometimes focussed on a group of stones or crosses, but usually she concentrated on a single headstone that filled the entire image. Several graves are photographed so free of any context that they are no longer recognisable as such, and in doing so, they attain an almost abstract character.

By adding a small piece of a mirror at the crossing of a photographed crucifix and a presentation of photos in little boxes filled with grass, Dommisse gave several photos an assemblage-like appearance. Dommisse attributes her fascination with this subject to her youth being raised in the family of a Protestant preacher.

The austere still lifes that Dommisse has been making since the mid-1950s are often related to her (artists’) portraits. When visiting artists either in their home or their studio, she encounters objects ordered in such a way that, when cropped by her photo camera, turn out to be attractive topics for photography. Rearranging these constellations to make them more pleasing for a photo is taboo for her. In a number of publications, such as a catalogue for ‘Verve’ (1956), an artists’ group in The Hague, Dommisse has published a large number of these (what she calls) ‘still lifes’, paired together with artists’ portraits.

In the same period, Dommisse took numerous painterly photographs for the storefront window display of ‘Accolade’, an antique store in Leiden. Her photos of arts-and-crafts products and fashion accessories—photographed against a neutral background, using natural light—demonstrate a more objectivist approach, produced for the Wereldkroniek, the VNF (Vereniging Nederlands Fabrikaat, ‘Association of Dutch Manufacturers’), and the couturier Jean Louzac

Of noteworthy mention is the photo series that Dommisse produced for the 1981 exhibition Thuiscultuur (‘Home Culture’) at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. To provide insight into the tremendous diversity of home interiors in the Netherlands, Dommisse photographed eleven highly disparate home interiors in The Hague: from a squatter’s space to a luxury apartment, from Dutch oak to lily-white, from overly extravagant to extremely austere. In addition to complete overviews of the interiors, she also took detail shots of theses spaces and portraits of their inhabitants.

Since 1980, a substantial share of Dommisse’s oeuvre consists of travel reportages in black and white as well as colour. Egypt and the Sahara region are her favourites, but she has also travelled to Albania, Indonesia and Poland. Here too it is the people, the architecture and the cultivated landscape that she charts out. It is not Dommisse’s aim to choose for subjects that, in her view, are sure to find success, such as starving children or impoverished circumstances. Instead, she attempts to present an image that is representative of the frequently joyful everyday life, the religion and culture. A position is nowhere to be found here. The almost atmospheric colour photos, with their full range of tints, stand in considerable opposition to the contrast-rich black-and-white photos.

Dommisse has never had any desire to commit to any one newspaper, magazine, or any other kind of client—not even to an artists’ association. As a freelancer, she possesses a tremendous amount of freedom in determining her subjects and choosing her assignments. It is for this very reason that the photos that she has produced on commission in no way form any real break with her other work, such as the many reproductions of two- and three-dimensional artworks that Dommisse made for a modest price for artists such as Wies de Bles, Bram Bogart, Jan Cremer and Lotti van der Gaag. Among her commissioned works, the numerous short pieces that she has written in the last twenty years for the magazine, Pulchri, should also be included. Just as her photographic portraits, these written portraits are remarkable for their high degree of simplicity, spontaneity, accessibility and regard for the artist as a person.

Mentioned above were the experiments with a stark black-and-white contrast and the assemblages in which Dommisse combined her photos with other media. She also produced a number of prints in mirror image, sometimes together with a combination print, such as the diptych of Maastricht in the rain. For the Stichting Vrouwen in de Beeldende Kunst (‘Women in Visual Art Foundation’), she made a combination print of a woman awakening at her painter’s easel. She also printed several photos of sculptures on gold- and metallic-coloured paper. In the mid-1970s, she put together collages from torn photos, featuring numerous apple-shaped forms.

More remarkable are the montage photos Dommisse made by taking two separate negatives and turning them into one, as with a portrait photo of the tormented looking artist Theo Mooyman in his studio, displayed on an initially blank painting canvas.

While Marianne Dommisse turns to visual devices and techniques adopted from art, she does not see her photography as an art form. She rejects an approach to the medium based solely on aesthetic grounds. Instead, she sees photography much more as an independent medium with its own qualities, possessing not just an aesthetic value, but also a news value, a narrative aspect, and a documentary character.

Marianne Dommisse depicts her subjects directly and with clarity. Matters of priority can easily be distinguished from what is secondary. Attention is usually concentrated on a single motif. Empty surfaces are often an important element in these photos, instilling the image with serenity. Sometimes the photos are technically imperfect: a blur sometimes occurs, a shadow sometimes falls across the face of the person being portrayed, small imperfections that give photos a spontaneous feel, bestowing on them a certain traditional charm. Dommisse prefers an imperfect technique to a photographic style that is in her eyes static and sterile. She tries to portray the people in front of her camera as authentically as can be: either working, or in any event, in surroundings that are meaningful. Staging, manipulation or additional lighting of the subject are only used when there is a specific situation that demands it. Dommisse uses three different Rolleiflex cameras with wide-angle, telephoto and 2.4 lenses. Since the mid-1970s, she also photographs with a 35 mm camera. From the very start she has used—an initially quite coarse-grain—400 ASA film, which allows her to take photos quickly. She prints virtually all of her photos in a rectangular format and preferably as large as possible.

Contrary to what has always been assumed, Dommisse has never been a member of the NFK (Nederlandse Fotografen Kunstkring, ‘Netherlands Photographers Art Society’) or of the artist’s association, Pulchri. The only association in which she was actually involved was the SVBK (Stichting Vrouwen in de Beeldende Kunst, ‘Women in Visual Art Foundation’). Together with Liesbeth Brandt Corstius, Josine de Bruyn Kops, and others, Dommisse founded this organisation in 1977 in The Hague with the goal of creating a more evident position for female artists in the art world, which in her opinion was strongly dominated by men. Through her work for the foundation, Dommisse became involved in the Dutch feminist magazine Opzij for which she made photo reportages about female artists for several years. It was these photos in Opzij that resulted in Pulchri’s request in 1978 for Dommisse to do photographic and written reportages on female artists for the association’s magazine. It was the start of a lengthy series of concise articles, in combination with photos, on both female and male visual artists. Dommisse’s active involvement in the SVBK as well as her participation in group exhibitions organised by the foundation came to an end in the early 1980s.

Besides its aesthetic qualities, Marianne Dommisse’s extensive oeuvre is also of substantial documentary value. Her photo archive provides a practically complete image of cultural life and the artistic climate in The Hague and environs from about 1955 to present. For certain artists, Dommisse’s photos have clearly had an influence on shaping their image in the public eye. The numerous portraits of Jan Cremer are remarkable in this respect, as well as the frequently reproduced photograph of Willem Hussem painting rather awkwardly. Like her fellow colleagues Livinus van de Bundt and Gerard Fieret, Dommisse provided a cautious counterweight to conventional ‘practices’ in The Hague through the original and liberating design of her photos. Dommisse’s influence appears to be limited to the area in and around The Hague. Meanwhile, however, a number of Hague artists have gained national notoriety. Consequently, the documentary significance of Dommisse’s oeuvre is growing parallel to the success of those artists whom she has portrayed.

Documentation