Kitchen Portraits

In commission of the City Archives and the The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts Erik Klein Wolterink has focused on the innards of the kitchens, as if the exterior didn’t matter.

The photographer opened cupboards, drawers, fridges and ovens. Each piece he photographed separately and reconstructed the images again to one unit. Like him, we zoom in on what the cupboards have collected over months or even decades. From instant mashed potatoes to truffle oil, from Maggi cubes to Ethiopian spice mixes. This is the raw material with which we must try to imagine who belongs to these kitchens.

A well-stocked kitchen refers to Turkish cookery with goat’s cheese and halal sausage. But the mix for homemade apple pie is a witness of an open attitude towards other customs. A mother shows her African roots with a plastic Voltic Sparkling Water bottle filled with palm oil. Female students undermine our prejudices with a spotless kitchen. In the kitchen of a family with growing children, a packet of Korma curry of Pakistani descent and cardamom pods try to square themselves with Dutch kitchen habits. Here the Dutch sandwich culture leaves its traces in the sandwich wrappers in the drawer, the sandwiches in the fridge and the Nutella chocolate paste in the sink cupboard next to the abrasive agent. The kitchen as metaphor of a complex, multicultural reality.

The book Kitchen Portraits is for sale in the City Bookshop.

see all the pictures here

source: Thisispaper.com