With his 2018 series The Great War Paul Koeleman made extensive use of found photography in order to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the ending of the First World War. The portraits that were the starting point for this series were bought in an antique shop in Hudson, NY and, according to the seller, they came from the estate of a medical doctor who used the photographs to document the recovery process of one of his patients, injured in the war. But even though the photographs are clearly dated – ‘1917’ or ’21st May 1919 ‘- they do not show any injuries or startling deformations.
”In the photographs themselves war as such is not visible, it is almost an academic study of the torso,” says Koeleman. But injuries can of course also be psychological in nature. Koelemans manipulation of the photographs by means of Photoshop and by adding other materials like paint or thin metal sheets and by layering can be read as the expression of the possible causes of the (psychological) traumas that a war like The Great War can cause: from the trenches, hidden injuries, and shell shock to the fear of being buried alive, to pain and impotence, all caught within a fixed frame.
When you look at these portraits of actress Nelly Frijda, it is almost as if you’re seeing double. You see a tormented woman, a joyful or fearful one. The slightly distorted face makes it difficult to guess her age. The Nelly’s I-6 (datum!!) are part of the series The Emotions I and are based on the book Gelaat en Karakter (Face and Character, 1958) of the Dutch professor of Emotion Theory Nico Frijda (1927-2015) in which he investigates facial expressions as the visible manifestation of emotions. In order to illustrate his theory, Frijda photographed his then wife, the young actress Nelly Frijda. He asked her to ‘act’ a wide range of different emotions through facial expressions. Many years later Koeleman had a conversation with Nelly and she told him how this went: ’Nelly! Act happy! And now, Nelly, act sad!’
This anecdote inspired Koeleman to create a new series of portraits. More than fifty years after the original pictures he gave Nelly the same assignments as her husband way back when. He then placed Frijda’s old negatives – battered as the were by time and also water damage – on top of the new, while also adding scans from glass fragments and from stains, and created the mysteriously layered effect of these enigmatic doubled portraits.
In the series Emotions II (2015) Koeleman turned his attention to Nico Frijda, the famed researcher of emotions himself and to another actress: Kitty Courbois (1937-2017) who was one of the grandes dames of the Dutch theatre and who was greatly admired by Frijda not in the least because of her wide range of emotional expression. This time they too act out a different range of emotions. Koeleman then constructs something of a virtual dialogue between professor and actor in a remarkable encounter between art and science.
When you look at these portraits of actress Nelly Frijda, it is almost as if you’re seeing double. You see a tormented woman, a joyful or fearful one. The slightly distorted face makes it difficult to guess her age. The Nelly’s I-6 (datum!!) are part of the series The Emotions I and are based on the book Gelaat en Karakter (Face and Character, 1958) of the Dutch professor of Emotion Theory Nico Frijda (1927-2015) in which he investigates facial expressions as the visible manifestation of emotions. In order to illustrate his theory, Frijda photographed his then wife, the young actress Nelly Frijda. He asked her to ‘act’ a wide range of different emotions through facial expressions. Many years later Koeleman had a conversation with Nelly and she told him how this went: ’Nelly! Act happy! And now, Nelly, act sad!’
This anecdote inspired Koeleman to create a new series of portraits. More than fifty years after the original pictures he gave Nelly the same assignments as her husband way back when. He then placed Frijda’s old negatives – battered as the were by time and also water damage – on top of the new, while also adding scans from glass fragments and from stains, and created the mysteriously layered effect of these enigmatic doubled portraits.
In the series Emotions II (2015) Koeleman turned his attention to Nico Frijda, the famed researcher of emotions himself and to another actress: Kitty Courbois (1937-2017) who was one of the grandes dames of the Dutch theatre and who was greatly admired by Frijda not in the least because of her wide range of emotional expression. This time they too act out a different range of emotions. Koeleman then constructs something of a virtual dialogue between professor and actor in a remarkable encounter between art and science.