Documentary projects

Amsterdam based photographer Bertien van Manen started as freelance photographer in 1977 and in 1979 published her first album. In 1987 and 1988 she photographed coalminers and their families in the American Appalachian mountains.

From 1990 she travelled for three and a half years through the former Soviet Union. The result, the album: “A Hundred Summers a Hundred Winters” , published in 1994, won several prizes and has been widely exhibited internationally. Since 1995 van Manen works in Asia and on a project about men near to her.

From July 1997 through May 2000 Van Manen visited China 14 times and travelled the big cities in the East, West and South of China, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, but also villages in the countryside and in the mountains not far from Tibet. As a result from this experience the book and exhibition East Wind West Wind was published.

Photographs are in public collections including: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, la Maison Européenne de la Photographie Paris, Museum of Modern Art New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Photo-Museum Winterthur Zurich, Museum for Photography Antwerp, Metropolitan Museum of Photography Tokyo.