Photographers Erik Klein Wolterink seems to be a kitchen lover. For this ‘Keuken’ series he opened cupboards, drawers, fridges and ovens of Dutch kitchens and shot them separately before reassembled them into a single seamless composite image, as if the exterior didn’t matter. I like to see the 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.
Excerpt from the artist:
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.
More Information at www.erikkleinwolterink.nl – Thanks to Ignant for the tip!
