Last year he said to me in his Alberts style, off the cuff: "Jan, I have a nice job for you next year in February." That turned out to be the opening of this exhibition. His first exhibition to be precise. And just to be clear: "Nice job" is a very free description for the situation in which I, as a notorious evader of the opening of exhibitions, find myself at the moment!
Albert van 't Slot, a mustached sixty-eight year old, romantic, Francophile, art collector, framer, perfectionist and last but not least photographer, has been my brother-in-law for almost half a century. For many years he has accompanied me in his large van and without grumbling transported my paintings wherever I went. Not to mention posting pictures and texts about my work on the Internet! So refusing his "nice job" was not an option. Of which we have taken note.
In Duiven, Albert runs a professional, well-established framing shop where, in addition to paintings, screen prints, etchings and drawings, he also provides photos with beautiful mounts and all kinds of frames. In doing so, he provides many people with expert advice on how best to frame their valuable or emotionally charged works of art.
As a photographer, Albert is self-taught. You could say that photography is a childhood passion of his. As an eleven-year-old schoolboy, he was already enthusiastically photographing with a small camera in Madurodam..... Yes, you have to start small. When the roll of film was full, he could hardly sleep, because he had to wait nine days for the photos to be developed and printed. Later, he did bridal pictures for his best friends. I would like to share with you Laurens Verhagen's description in Sir Edmund (the weekly supplement of de Volkskrant). "The days when the folder with the glossy photos and the accompanying negatives could be collected were worth GOLD. They were exciting days full of expectations in which the memories had not yet solidified into shiny pictures."
The developments within photography have taken that GOLD away from Albert van 't Slot. And not only him. Since digitalisation, photography has taken a huge flight. Last year, 1.3 trillion pictures were taken worldwide. Many of them highly edited. Digital photos are highly manipulable, thus contradicting the common notion that the camera never lies and says more than a thousand words.
I will tell you two anecdotes. Once, at an exhibition in Utrecht, I walked between two white walls to the next room. Suddenly and in a split second, I was illuminated from the front by a bright blinding flash. Looking back, I saw that my shadow was stuck in grey on the white wall. The wall had probably been treated with a light-sensitive layer. A very special experience. My shadow was no longer attached to my body, because I was already one step further.
Another anecdote. The Belgian painter Renee Magritte who, under his brightly painted pipe, wrote "This is not a pipe" on the same painting. And on another painting, under a brightly realistic apple: "This is not an apple".
Why am I telling you this? It illustrates the fact that THE PHOTO captures time and space around us on a flat surface. A kind of documentation.
But also that THE PHOTO is its own reality. For with the best will in the world, you cannot smoke THE pipe of Renee Margritte and I would not eat his apple either. Nor will my shadow ever be detached from my body.
The light, the sunlight, through camera obscura, the small hole in the wall of a dark room, has made it possible for a photographer to tell a story with his or her pictures. A story that tells as much about you as it does about the photographer. It can be a dialogue between the flat photographic image. The photographer and you, the viewer. The photographic image can even be reproduced several times.
For this photographer, no photos with a glossy exterior that are only made to please you, but an expressive quest, a dialogue with philosophical and emotional charges. On the invitation for this exhibition, I indicated that you could categorise Albert van 't Slot's photographic works into two themes. One with ABSTRACTED TEXTURES in which time and the beauty of erosion and decay are hidden, and one in which the living fellow human being and the human being depicted as a work of art figure. I will refrain from further descriptions, so that you can decide for yourself what you see, or want to see. I would like to end this introduction with a poem by the Syrian poet Adonis.
The poem was translated by Kees Nijland and Assad Jaber:
The best thing is to
shake up
And the others-someone
find you a call
Others an echo
The most beautiful thing is to be proof
of light and dark
That your last word
is first
And the others-someone
you as a soap bubble
others as a creator
The most beautiful thing is to be
divided in
speaking and being silent.
I wish you much viewing pleasure and not after I have pointed out that the photographic works are also for sale, I declare this exhibition open.
Jan van Krieken van Huessen, artist.
