Biography

Discussion

In his youth, Alewijn Oostwoud Wijdenes developed a passion for photography that has never subsided. Music was, and still is, his second love. As a ‘conveyer of mood’, it cannot be seen separately from his creative photographic expression. Musical performances, such as the Préludes by Claude Debussy, inspire images in Oostwoud Wijdenes, which he subsequently uses to create colour photos.

Due to the many responsibilities that come with running one’s own flower bulb company, Oostwoud Wijdenes never had the time to play an active role in the world of the photographic trade associations or visit museums on a frequent basis. One employee working for his business, the painter Jan Reus, liked to travel and attended countless exhibitions. Oostwoud Wijdenes took Reus’ inspiring stories of the things he observed and translated them into concise, stylised scenes in photography. In these images, various employees at the company, and especially Reus, figure prominently as actors.

As a photographer, Oostwoud Wijdenes is largely an autodidact. Simple darkroom work, e.g. developing, rinsing, and retouching, were taught to him by the local professional photographers in the villages of Winkel and Nieuwe Niedorp. His feeling for art and music were obtained in the family home. Both parents played piano, and in addition, his father played clarinet and his mother violin. Oostwoud Wijdenes’ mother had grown up among artists in her parents’ café, called ‘Land’s Welvaren’, in Schoorldam, where Picasso was a regular customer for an entire summer. Charley Toorop was also a regular at the café, as were the brothers Piet and Matthieu Wiegman. With her own engaging stories about artists, Alewijn’s mother inspired her son to seek own artistic aspirations. Starting at the age of fourteen, he became enamoured of photography. He also played piano and performed in (operetta) bands.

In the 1960s—by this time already an independent tulip grower—Oostwoud Wijdenes and his co-worker Jan Reus were conducting long discussions about the language of images, absurdity in everyday life, convention, taboos, and the narrowness of thinking. These conversations fed both men’s fantasy. As well inspired by what he encountered photography magazines and books, Oostwoud Wijdenes developed his photographic vision.

Oostwoud Wijdenes and Reus became intrigued with toying with reality. Utilising their own visual means, they examined ways to bend reality into what they themselves refer to as ‘estranged realism’. They worked out their fantasy worlds in photographic and painted scenes, each in their own way, but with the one most definitely influencing the other. Oostwoud Wijdenes and Reus found their role models in surrealistic painting and photography of the second half of the 1960s, in the films of Luis Bunuel, and in television programmes such as Monthy Python and Herenleed (of the Dutch broadcasting company, VPRO), all produced by like-minded image makers. Oostwoud Wijdenes admired photographers such as Sanne Sannes, Jean Loup Sieff and Chico Leydmann. His work, however, has more in common with the photography of Paul de Nooijer. This is to be observed primarily in his approach to composing offbeat visual narratives, in which humour and parody each play a role. Oostwoud Wijdenes provides an excellent example of ‘Magic Realistic’ photography of the 1960s, which, internationally, drew primarily the interest of autonomous (amateur) photographers. Thinking and working via concepts in visual art gave an extra stimulus to this movement in photography.

The subjects encountered in Oostwoud Wijdenes’ photography are diverse: portraits, staged scenes, nude men (sometimes also women), people in shortened perspective, non-communicating figures in the landscape, and symbolic attributes. The meaning of the photos is not always easy to discern. The subjects appear to be more of an introduction to a story that the observer can complete himself. Loneliness and isolation, as well as people’s inability to understand or deal with each other are recurring themes. Sometimes the photos are simply meant to be humorous, by confusing the observer through absurd situations. The frequent appearance of the male nude in Oostwoud Wijdenes’ photos—in the early 1970s by no means a common theme for (amateur) photographers—and the unmarried status of both artists, living and working together under one roof, has led some to describe his photography as homo-erotic. Yet this is not the message being conveyed by his models: the nude figure is instead part of the visual unravelling of reality. What appears as normal therefore suddenly becomes foreign.

Oostwoud Wijdenes’ photographs are based on ideas worked out in sketches. The camera is not used as a tool to ‘catch’ reality. The photographic image is determined not by what he sees, but what roams about in his spirit. He shares a like-mindedness spanning a century with artistic photographers of the impressionist movement circa 1900, without showing even the slightest resemblance to work produced at that time. Such a connection is nevertheless warranted. Just as with these forerunners, self-expression is the primary goal in Oostwoud Wijdenes’ photography, with symbolism as an important narrative visual tool. He is also seeking an internal idiom that rises to the surface based on moods and feelings, as well as by listening to and looking at other forms of art. His photos usually bear no titles, as he is unable to attach a verbal description to feelings associated with a particular photograph. In those cases where titles have been given, they function to provide information regarding the story behind the photo. The shot of a young man playing a clarinet in the church of Warmenhuizen in the middle of an exhibition, for instance, is called To Moussorgski, as a tribute to the composer who wrote the musical piece Pictures at an Exhibition.

In 1985, the public library in the village of Hippolytushoef asked Oostwoud Wijdenes and Reus to make a photo reportage on the care of the mentally disabled in the province of North Holland, marking the occasion of a nationwide fundraising week. The invitation came from a committee member who had visited their home and viewed a small private collection of photographic depictions of disabled people. The reportage that came out of this falls outside the framework of the two men’s ideas concerning free expression. In more than 150 documentary photos, they presented a diverse and realistic image of the conditions in the places where disabled people live: the patient care, their daily activities, their interactions with each other, contacts with family and caregivers, their happiness and their sadness. The photos provide both a general overview and close-ups of the residents in their living environments. For decades, the mentally disabled lived their lives out of society’s view. Since the publication of Ad Windig’s photobook In het land der levenden (‘In the Land of the Living’) in 1966, the subject was not again broached by Dutch photographers until the 1980s. In the aftermath of the exhibition accompanying the reportage made by Oostwoud Wijdenes and Reus, the topic received additional notoriety in 1988 with the appearance of the photobook Bezwaard Bestaan (‘Encumbered Existence’) by Marrie Bot, a photographer in Rotterdam. In each case, the approach taken by Windig, Oostwoud Wijdenes, Reus and Bot was: documentation with respect for the person portrayed. The differences between Windig and Bot, on the one hand, and Oostwoud Wijdenes and Reus, on the other, are evident. With the first two photographers, the emphasis lay more on the individual, achieved by taking serene shots and by isolating the person portrayed from the rest of the group. With the latter two, the depictions featured primarily the patients’ social surroundings.

An entirely different kind of commission was a series of photos, entitled In de ban van de Ring (‘The Lord of the Rings’), which Oostwoud Wijdenes made in 1996 to accompany the five-part symphony written by the composer Johan de Meij. Based on imaginary representations inspired by Tolkien’s epic, Oostwoud Wijdenes made compositions of shadowy fantasy creatures in combination with floral elements found in his garden. According to the reviews at the time, the combination of a musical performance with the reading aloud of fragments from Tolkien’s book and Oostwoud Wijdenes’ slideshow in the Michaëlskerk (‘St. Michael’s Church’) in Oosterland was experienced as extraordinary and compelling. Without the added atmosphere and the entourage of words and music, these photos come across as somewhat contrived. Besides this series, Oostwoud Wijdenes has also produced dream-like compositions in colour, in which representations of paintings and human figures are placed in natural soundings.

The tools that Oostwoud Wijdenes used to create his black-and-white photos were 35 mm cameras, including various Nikon cameras, with telephoto and wide-angle lenses, negative material with a coarse grain, and hard paper for black-and-white photos printed in high contrast and rather sombre. Although never a real lover of darkroom work, Oostwoud Wijdenes has experimented with darkroom techniques such as reticulation (a bubbling effect in the gelatin, which occurs when there are large differences in the temperatures of various baths) and burn. The finishing of these prints, however, shows little nuance or detail. In Oostwoud Wijdenes’ vision, glutted areas of black—perhaps considered by some to be technically imperfect—served to strengthen subjects that are melancholy and introverted. Oostwoud Wijdenes staged his photos and made preparatory sketches in advance. He would then go out in search of suitable locations, models, and lighting conditions, in an effort to construct a particular image according to his own stipulations. He sometimes compiled his black-and-white photos using various different negatives.

Oostwoud Wijdenes worked chiefly in black and white, but from 1982 on, he began trying out colour as well. Unlike his black-and-white prints, colour photos were printed at a colour photo lab instead of his own darkroom. In 1996, Oostwoud Wijdenes permanently shut down his darkroom due to health complications, from that point on switching to colour alone. Since 1989, he has produced layered colour images by means of the ‘sandwich’ technique: with the help of a Novoflex copying machine, he copies two slide positives with one placed on top of the other. With the resulting copy, he subsequently repeats this step, adding a third slide.

Alewijn Oostwoud Wijdenes’ photographic oeuvre is a surprising divergence from the work of the average Dutch (amateur) photographer. The explanation for this lies chiefly in the unusual subjects he chose to depict. Oostwoud Wijdenes’ photography is rooted in the ‘Magic Realist’ movement in photography of the 1960s and ’70s, but it has always remained purely photographic, as opposed to the many ‘cut-and-paste’ works produced during this period. Oostwoud Wijdenes composes—relying on models who role-play in natural surroundings—a compact visual narrative within the framework of a single photo. One might compare his style of working to that of a columnist, who, applying a moderate degree of moralism, upends existing conventions via short texts, allows unexpected twists and turns to occur in his stories, and holds up a mirror for humanity to see itself with a touch of mild jest.

Documentation