BABY

Picturing the Ideal Human 1840 - Now

Together with Hedy van Erp I curated the exhibition BABY - Picturing the Ideal Human 1840 - Now which was on show at the Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam and in an adapted version at the National Media Museum, Bradford UK.

Exhibition text

Every era has its own beauty ideals: clothing, make-up, hairstyle and physical type change in line with public tastes. In advertising and on television we are incessantly bombarded with conceptions of the ideal human being. At present the idealised image seems to be so coercive that we even want to measure our newborn children against it. That this is no novelty becomes clear when we look at baby photos from the past 165 years. It turns out that the genre of baby photography is not quite as innocent as it seems.

Baby photos are often used to convey the values and norms of adults, and not just in commercial imagery, where one would expect it, but in every possible genre. Parents, studio photographers and producers of adverts and magazines propagate this idealised image of the young child.

On the other hand, this is apparently how people think babies ought to be: healthy, touching and innocent. We prefer a romanticised image to a realistic one. At the other end of the spectrum stand documentary photographers and fine artists who employ photography. They are not concerned with the desired image, confronting us with a realistic, unsentimental or reflective picture in their work.

Images both idealised and realistic evolve over the course of history. In the exhibition these two directions are set alongside one another as thematic guidelines. This gives rise to an intriguing field of tension, in which the baby photo emerges as a mirror of a specific era’s values and norms, social habits and patterns, commercial trends and artistic developments.

Besides these two major themes there is also consideration for two important sub-themes: birth photos and images inspired by the Madonna. With photos from family albums, postcards, advertising, scientific, documentary and creative photography, BABY presents a unique view of infants since the dawn of photography.

Selected artists included:

Koos Breukel, Julia Margaret Cameron, Rineke Dijkstra, Ed van der Elsken, Nan Goldin, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Annie Leibovitz, Oscar Rejlander, August Sander, Mario Testino, Weegee, Boris Mikhailov, John Thomson, Walter Blum, Henri Berssenbrugge, Kors van Bennekom, Cecil Beaton, Philip Lorca diCorcia, Peter Martens, Mary Ellen Mark, Joseph Rodriguez, Lennart Nilsson, Larry Clark, Christina Garcia Rodero, Donna Ferrato, Annelies Strba, Dirk Kome, Sally Mann, Amy Arbus, Frank Krems, Colby Katz, Rince de Jong, Corinne Noordenbos and Tom Wood.

With the kind cooperation of the following collections:

Spaarnestad Photo|George Eastman House, International Museum for Photography and Film, Rochester|International Center of Photography, New York|Victoria & Albert Museum, Londen| SDCF, Prentenkabinet, Leiden|ICM, Haarlem| Koninklijk Huisarchief, Den Haag| Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam|NFM, Rotterdam| Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris

Exhibition in NFM, Rotterdam NL

BABY was curated by Hedy van Erp and Iris Sikking (ICON Foundation) originally for the Nederlands Fotomuseum and designed by Preta Wolzak (Fort Blink) in association with Cecilia Hendrikx (SuopuLab). Veenman Publishers published a book, designed by Victor Levie
(MV Levie van der Meer).

Exhibition in NMM, Bradford UK

In close collaboration with co-curator Hedy van Erp and Philippa Wright, curator of the National Media Museum, we adapted the exhibition BABY from its initial display in the Rotterdam to the galleries of the National Media Museum. We extensively made use of the rich collection archives of the museum. Also an accompanying exhibit was initiated by the NMM entitled Bradford Babies.