Biography

Discussion

Teun Voeten refers to himself as a ‘turmoil photographer’. This word describes the scope of his work better than the term ‘war photographer’. The reality of the conflict regions he has visited in the 1980s and ’90s is less heroic than the latter title suggests. Voeten’s photography reflects intelligence and social engagement. Through images, words, and deeds, he shows his involvement with people, who—as a consequence of circumstances—are either perpetrators or victims. Voeten is well informed in advance before traveling to any specific war zone. He returns with complete reportages consisting of text and photos (so-called ‘package deals’, according to American standards), which he subsequently offers to the editorial boards of magazines and newspapers. He also does regular work on assignment. His background in cultural anthropology is what serves as a basis for Voeten, resulting in a distinctive and sometimes headstrong approach.

Voeten received a camera from his parents as a gift while still in secondary school. Part of this time was spent in the United States, where he attended Sparta High School in Sparta, New Jersey, as an exchange student. It was during this stay that he first became enthralled with the vibrancy of New York City. Voeten ventured out on his own into the city, equipped with his camera and gaining his first experiences with this medium. Upon returning to the Netherlands, Voeten tried out a number of different university studies. At this time, however, none captured his interest. Voeten’s real desire was to photograph. From the start, his preference was to focus his camera on society’s ‘flip side’. Voeten learned to master photography by taking a class in photography at Lantaren/Het Venster in Rotterdam, followed by internships with his uncle, the architectural photographer Sybolt Voeten, as well as Jannes Linders, Chris Hutter, and Charles van Gelder. The accent of his work, however, began shifting from architecture more and more in the direction of portraits and photo reportages. In his own words: ‘People are unpredictable, buildings are not. That makes photographing people always exciting. Much is dependent on chance.’ The academic subject that did manage to satisfy his intellectual curiosity in the end was cultural anthropology at Leiden University, with a minor in philosophy.

From the first moment he stepped foot in New York, Voeten was mesmerised by the city. In no time, he found himself interested in the city’s outcasts. Voeten began working as a reportage photographer for various magazines and newspapers in the city. He was also studying cultural history as a minor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Much later, in 2000, Voeten moved from Brussels to New York, after having previously traded in the Netherlands for Belgium as the country where he chose to live. He describes the Netherlands as excessively organised and stifling when it comes to social democracy. While doing business is more difficult in Belgium, Voeten feels life there is more bearable because of its friendlier atmosphere and more appealing, somewhat cluttered landscape. He greatly dislikes the moral consensus and the forced morality he encounters in in the Netherlands. He prefers anonymity to the ‘cocktail and subsidy’ circuit.

Restlessness and a desire to find news are factors that govern the course of Voeten’s endeavours. For this reason, he is always traveling, such as when, for example, he followed the dramatic developments running up to and during the 1990 elections in Nicaragua. This resulted in an article published in the New York magazine High Times. Voeten also did investigative work in the gold-diggers’ community of Bella Rica in Ecuador, a reportage that was published in the Dutch magazine Onze Wereld (‘Our World’). Voeten’s texts and photographs also served as his final report for his doctoral exam in cultural anthropology.

Voeten has been traveling to various war zones on a regular basis since 1991. He frequently does so of his own accord, but sometimes as well through the assistance of NGOs such as Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross. These organisations provide Voeten with access to the logistical resources and contacts he may require on location. His photos are sold through the Dutch press agency Hollandse Hoogte and other American press agencies. Voeten also sometimes works on assignment for a number of publications, including the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland and the Flemish newspaper De Morgen. The choice of which countries are to be spotlighted is determined by Voeten’s personal interest, practical considerations, and those conflicts prevailing at any given time.

Over the years, Voeten has built up an impressive record. He has photographed in countries such as Panama and Ecuador affected by political unrest, as well as in war zones around the world, including former Yugoslavia, Haiti, Rwanda, Zaire, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sudan, Colombia, and Sierra Leone. Voeten returns to most of these countries on a regular basis to keep up with the latest developments.

With the break-up of Yugoslavia, Voeten tracked the events that followed very closely. Directly after his graduation in 1991, he traveled to Croatia to make a photo reportage on the cities of Osijek and Vinkovci, two cities completely ravaged by shellfire. In early 1992, the war crossed over into Bosnia. The international community stood by helplessly as Serbs, Croats, and Muslims slaughtered each other. Concentration camps, the bombardment of civilian targets, mass murder, snipers, and endless queues of refugees were suddenly a daily occurrence in the heart of modern Europe. Voeten was there to witness all of it and was subject to the risks involved. At one point, he allowed a group of reckless, drunken, and drugged-up soldiers to take him to the front line. There he got shot in the leg by a Serb sniper, consequently ending up in the hospital. Voeten nevertheless relativises the danger: ‘In Sarajevo you knew there were certain streets where you shouldn’t go. You learned very quickly to recognise the sounds of mortar shells and whether they were coming your way or not. You also know that a mortar shell doesn’t bounce off a soft surface and that it does on asphalt. You can assess the risks. But this was a classic beginner’s mistake: going with drunken soldiers to places that are extremely dangerous.’

Following his return—at this time he was living and working alternatively in Brussels and Leiden—Voeten served as the Flanders coordinator of the campaign ‘Nederlandse fotografen voor ex-Joegoslavië’ (‘Dutch Photographers for Former Yugoslavia’) in 1993. One year later, he initiated a campaign of the Belgian newspaper De Morgen in support of an independent media in Sarajevo. Voeten conducted background research on location and took on the responsibility of organising and transporting materials to Sarajevo.

In late 1994, Voeten traveled to Burundi and Rwanda to photograph the steady flow of refugees taking place there. As it was his very first trip to Africa, it had been his specific intention to pick out a small and relatively safe country. After ten days in Burundi and South Rwanda, he arrived in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, where representatives of the United Nations told him that everything was calm, offering to take him the next day to the demilitarised zone. That same night, the airplane of the Rwandan president Habyarimana was shot down. Blamed as the perpetrators were the former colonial leaders (the Belgians), along with those who were perceived as their supporters: the Tutsis. The genocide began the following morning. Hutu death squads slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Voeten fled to a hotel—taking photographs on the street posed a life-threatening situation—and spent his time writing reportages for De Morgen and the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. After several days, he was evacuated along with other Belgians that were in the country.

The revenge of the Tutsis was not long in coming. From neighbouring Uganda, the resistance army RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) began invading Rwanda. Endless streams of Hutus fled to Tanzania and former Zaire. In several days time there emerged the largest refugee camp that had ever been witnessed. In the following and May and July, Voeten returned twice to Rwanda to photograph the dramatic events as they transpired.

In 1996, Voeten traveled to Afghanistan, where he photographed fighters of the Taliban, a movement of religious combatants originating in the refugee camps of Pakistan. Following a blitzkrieg that resulted in the capture of the cities Herat and Kandahar, the Taliban advanced towards the Afghan capital, Kabul, in 1996. In September of that same year, they captured the city. Voeten photographed the consequences of the war: cities that lay in total devastation, the wounded learning to walk again, and women on the street forced to veil their faces, according to strict Islamic law.

One year later, Voeten traveled to Sudan, where a civil war had been raging between the Arabic, Islamic regime in the capital Khartoum and the black, Christian and animistic peoples of the south since the country established its independence in 1956. As a result of the war, the Dinka people, one of the largest tribes in the south of the country, were forced to fall back completely on their traditional lifestyle. For the Dinkas, everything revolves around cattle. Cows are a currency, foodstuff, status symbol, a source of inspiration for poems and songs, and warmth on cold nights. Cow manure is used to light fires for preparing food, with the ash used to cover their faces. Not only for cosmetic reasons: it also functions to keep the vermin at bay. In Voeten’s dream-like photos, the cows—just as in Dinka life—are central to the image.

With the war in Sierra Leone, ideological motives are equally as elusive. Here the struggle concerns money and power. Because the eastern and southern regions of the country are rich in diamonds, it is here where the heaviest battles occur. In 1992, the rebel group RUF (‘Revolutionary United Front’) blew fresh life into the struggle, with the backing of the neighbouring country Liberia. In 1998, Voeten was present as West African peacekeeping forces of ECOMOG (Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group) made their move against the RUF, driving the rebels out of the capital Freetown. Although the international peacekeeping mission again quickly gained control of most of the country, the rebels succeeded in retaking several important cities prior to Christmas 1998 during a surprise offensive. Voeten likewise fled in a panic and vanished from the outside world. When he failed to establish contact with his family and friends after several days, a search campaign was set up in the Netherlands. The NVJ (Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten, ‘Netherlands Journalists Association’) and its Belgian sister organisation were just about to send an investigative committee to Sierra Leone, when Voeten suddenly resurfaced in March 1998, unharmed after two frightening weeks of fleeing from the rebels. Back in Belgium, he started up a fundraising campaign for a school run by friends in Sierra Leone, a project that was coordinated in collaboration with Doctors without Borders and Belgian school children.

In 1994, Voeten’s discovery of people living under the streets of New York city inspired him to create the anthropological/journalistic project ‘Tunnel People’. For consecutive months, he consorted with homeless people. Voeten had learned about the tunnels during a conversation with the American ethnographer Terry Williams, whose own research into the crack houses and cocaine gangs had shifted to the ‘human moles’ living in the abandoned rail and subway tunnels of the city. Voeten described them as ‘(…) a new class of people cast off by society who have become essentially invisible. I want to give the invisible [people] a human face.’ As Henri Beunders (Professor of ‘History and Society, Media and Culture’) writes in the foreword of Voeten’s book Tunnel People, Voeten’s photo reportage appears to be a virtually literal repeat exercise of what the first [socially] engaged photojournalist, Jacob Riis, did in the slum neighbourhoods of New York a century earlier. Riis’ photobook, entitled How the Other Half Lives, caused a shockwave in the United States. In Beunder’s view, however, Voeten’s intentions are different than Riis’, whose aim was to improve the situation of those involved. Voeten, by contrast, has no such pretensions. His sole purpose is ‘(…) to provide insight into the soul of the tunnel people, and not to be a European teaching the Americans a moral lesson.’ Beunders believes that with Tunnel Poeple, Voeten is above all expressing precisely that which he was educated to be: an anthropologist.

This is also what distinguishes Voeten from Peter Martens, a photographer who shot dramatic images of homeless and displaced people in New York City during the 1980s. Martens saw these people as victims of an unjust system and condemned the situation in the form of raw black-and-white images. By contrast, Voeten observes people who, in spite of living conditions perceived by us as inhumane, manage to get by very well.

In his book How de body? Hoop en horror in Sierra Leone (English title: How de body? One Man’s Horrifying Journey Through an African War; ‘How de Body?’ is a form of greeting used in Sierra Leone, meaning ‘How are you?’) from 2000, Voeten gives a largely textual account of his travels in this country. Several photos are used to illustrate his story, which is based on his journalistic annotations and recollections of his travels in other war-torn regions. Voeten alternates his descriptions of blood-curdling adventures with laconic comments about the home front, his working method, and the photojournalistic profession. He writes that, in the eyes of an immigration officer, he probably comes across as an odd dock: ‘All of the foreigners are leaving the country—headed in the opposite direction is the heavy traffic of the aid workers in their jeeps—and here I come strolling along, instead wanting to get in.’

Voeten is very well aware that considerations of a business nature sometimes oblige one to cover news stories that are more current. His clients—the media—desire photos of conflict situations from around the world. Voeten keeps this in mind when determining his choice of subject matter. ‘As a photographer, you always have to have a bit of a shopkeeper’s instinct’, as he puts it. In his book How de Body he observes: ‘Child soldiers are photogenic. Black tykes parading around with tough-looking rifles and who look into the lens with big, serious eyes. (…) Sweet little rascals, war as children’s play, lost innocence, initiation rites to adulthood. Metaphors enough.’ The big difference with other news photographers, however, is that Voeten is often on the scene before anyone else, he stays around longer, and prefers to work alone. This gives him an opportunity to get acquainted with the situation, to establish the necessary contacts, and to increase his freedom of movement.

Through his work, Voeten experiences emotional events, which he preferably shares with other photographers. In How De Body, he describes his meeting with the former war photographer Corinne Dufka, who has won numerous World Press Photo competitions with her photos from Liberia. Dufka voiced Voeten’s biggest fear when telling him why she had once temporarily traded in her camera to do work as a human rights activist. ‘I was sick of racing from one hot spot to another’, she told him. ‘You’re only dealing with incidents, without any opportunity to delve deeper into your subject.’ Voeten remarks: ‘After years of war, many journalists have a tough layer around their soul that simply doesn’t wear off. Those who are most sensible decide to give it a break for a while.’ In How de Body he writes: ‘In our profession, it’s actually taboo to talk about these kinds of issues [fear] (…).’ Voeten is unhappy with the aura of the heathen lifestyle that surrounds the profession of war photographer. He contests the myth of drunken photographers ruthlessly sneaking up on their victims: ‘In the field, you stay away from alcohol as much as you possibly can. People like Sebastiao Salgado of James Nachtwey don’t touch a drop of alcohol, because they’re always on their qui vive [alert]. Very professional.’

Nevertheless, Voeten also finds himself getting caught up in career deformation on occasion, along with the ambivalent feelings that come with it: on one hand, he still wants to feel compassion, trying with every fibre not to become soft and cynical; at the same time, however, photography itself requires so much concentration that one automatically distances oneself. Voeten still has doubts with respect to his role as a photographer: is he an outsider or a participant? In How de Body he puts it as follows: ‘I’ve chosen for the cowardly profession of observer on the sidelines, only because I’m torn by the absence of any obligation and lack the desire to take action.’

Voeten spends a lot of time thinking about the role of photography in the current information era and about his own functioning in that world. As a result of commercialisation, globalisation, and cartel forming of the media, news is becoming increasingly consumer-oriented. World news is degenerating into a short-lived hype lasting only days, one in which the CNN circus—followed by all of the large press agencies—descends on a conflict zone for several days, only to disappear en masse, running off to the next sensational hot spot that comes along. Long-term and in-depth reporting are the exception. Zapping from one news story to the next is a more apt characterisation of the situation.

‘Sometimes’, Voeten relates, ‘you feel like a photographer on safari. This was especially the case in Sarajevo. During the beginning of the war, journalists were still being welcomed with open arms, because people felt that the world press could speed up the peace process. After a couple of years, people’s hope disappeared and photographers were treated with ridicule and scorn. During a meeting of Doctors without Borders, I was told by a “local” that it would be better if the press just disappeared out of the city, “so that we can die in dignity without any outsiders.”‘ Voeten respects this view. This is why he is more prone to frequent places that have not (yet) become world news as opposed to than war zones. But this is precisely where the dilemma lies. Because the home front pays for photos of newsworthy war situations and has virtually no interest in photos of places where people are living in peace. On the other hand, because there are fewer photos available of these so-called ‘forgotten wars’, Voeten still always manages to get his material published one way or another.

Voeten has ambivalent feelings when it comes to the latest ‘hot spots’. He occasionally allows himself to get swept up in a media hype, even though he despises it. ‘The rules, the incitement, and the high prices—there are always many people profiting from the war everywhere—I find it all repulsive.’ But at the same time: ‘Of course, you always hope to return in good health with nice work and then it’s sometimes handy to take advantage of the short-term comforts that come with the arrival of a convoy of aid workers and journalists.’

Voeten always does extensive preparatory work in advance by reading up on the history and the political situation in the country he plans to visit. He also speaks with colleagues and aid workers. Upon arriving on the scene, he evaluates the situation further. In most cases, Voeten speaks the main language of the country in question. In Yugoslavia, he learned the Serbo-Croatian language in order to conduct his work more independently. Voeten always has a couple of addresses already on him, and once he gets to where he has to be, he lines up the names of other reliable contacts. He acts on ad hoc situations, but preferably avoids the front lines. This is sometimes unavoidable, such as when the lines have unexpectedly moved much closer. One day things are calmer than expected, the next he encounters a situation more hectic or more dangerous than he had initially surmised. The circumstances in a war zone can change in an instant. This can also involve the infrastructure: roadways are accessible one day, the next day they are being bombed, as he experienced in former Yugoslavia. Voeten always tries to leave behind some kind of trail—in the form of an address, a telephone call, or an email—for people back at home. In reality, however, he enjoys being out of touch, being alone, working without anybody else around, so as to blend in with the local environment as much as he possibly can.

Voeten’s mastery of the various techniques in black-and-white photography is developed to such a degree that his photos are comprehensible, with stunning contrasts in light and dark and simultaneously interesting down to the finest detail. He succeeds at quickly distinguishing between the key aspects and matters that are secondary, and adjusts his camera angles, composition, light and dark contrasts, motion blur, grain, and fine gradation to tell ‘his own story’. When photographing a situation with a dead body lying in the street and he wants to include bystanders in the picture, then he takes a somewhat higher vantage point. When photographing children, he sometimes bends down on his knees to approach them as equals. In situations when children are clearly the victims of the grown-up world, however, he chooses a higher angle in order to emphasise their helplessness. Every decision he makes when shooting or printing a photo—whether it be the camera angle, the lens setting, or the frame—is highly conceived. It is precisely in these areas that his talent lies. Voeten’s photos were quite commonly published on the front pages of Dutch newspapers such as the NRC Handelsblad, Trouw, and Het Parool, as well as the Belgium newspapers De Morgen and De Standaard. This also says something about the quality of his images.

Voeten began taking photographs with a Pentax K1000. Later on, he purchased a Hasselblad and a Cambo 6/9 technical camera for his architectural photos. For reportages, Voeten uses a Nikon FM and a Nikon FE2-camera, as well as a Leica M6.

Voeten uses the Nikon FE2 most often, because it allows him to work quickly and effectively in difficult situations. The ‘Tunnel People’ series was produced with the Leica M6 camera because it gives the best results in conditions with little light, but also because of its handiness at times when speed is a necessity. Voeten finishes his black-and-white film rolls in his own darkroom. Sometimes a friend assists, when an assignment has to be completed urgently. At other times he takes his material to a photo lab.

The basis for Voeten’s work is and will always be his negatives. Even though he scans his prints, digital photography is simply not (yet) his thing. By no means is he computer illiterate. Voeten’s work is available for viewing on his self-made website: www.teunvoeten.com.

Voeten often writes stories to accompany his photos. The political context of some of his images is too complex to convey only with a photo. The written word offers a solution: ‘Photos are merciless, but a good quote can reflect the essence,’ as he puts it. Photos in combination with intriguing captions and a background story are still the best way to approach the complex reality. There are also cases when taking photographs is simply not possible. During the genocide in Rwanda, the situation was too dangerous; in Sierra Leone, his cameras were stolen by the rebels; and in Afghanistan under the Taliban, cameras were completely taboo. By contrast, conducting an interview under such circumstances rarely poses any problems.

Writing and shooting photos cannot be done at the same time. Both means of expression require their own form of concentration. Voeten places his emphasis on photography and conducts interviews, for instance, only as a second option.

In addition to writing stories, Voeten gives lectures and takes part in public discussions and panels. His lectures are on topics such as ethnography, the power of images, the current state of contemporary war photography, and matters important to him as a photographer, such as the homeless living in New York. In March 2001, Voeten participated in a panel discussion on the subjects of ‘forgotten wars’, organised by Doctors without Borders at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, as well as a panel on the ‘violations of the rights of humans and the role of the media’ at the School for International and Public Affairs of Columbia University in New York City.

Teun Voeten upholds the Dutch tradition of qualified and socially engaged photography. In this sense, he holds an important place alongside his illustrious predecessors in the photographic profession, such as Ad van Denderen, Koen Wessing, and Willem Diepraam. Together with a younger generation of freelance photographers—e.g. Kadir van Lohuizen, Leo Erken, Petterik Wiggers, Eddy van Wessel, and Jan Banning—he has never been afraid to get involved in the lives of those experiencing misfortune as a result of poverty and war. Unlike these other photographers, however, Voeten is more of a reportage photographer when it comes to his going after news. More so than a documentary photographer, i.e. someone who studies the various angles of a subject at his own steady pace. Voeten never gives himself that much time.

Voeten’s orientation is very international. His move to New York therefore suits him well. The same applies to his restless nature, which also fits the character of the city. Contrasting with these personal qualities is his ability to sense subtle, serene emotions, as revealed in his photos. Voeten’s intellectual baggage is reflected in his well-considered approach to the chosen subject matter, and a persistent healthy dose of questioning with regards to the utility and necessity of his work.

Documentation