Interieur van het woonhuis van de familie Uhlenbeck aan de Bothalaan in Hilversum 1911 - 1912

Curator: What we have here is a gelatin silver print titled "Interieur van het woonhuis van de familie Uhlenbeck aan de Bothalaan in Hilversum"– or "Interior of the Uhlenbeck Family Home on Bothalaan in Hilversum" made sometime between 1911 and 1912. The photographer is Carolina (Loentje) Frederika Onnen. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: My initial feeling is that the room is cold, despite the inviting placement of the furniture. There is no sign of life anywhere. An abandoned space caught by chance. Curator: Abandoned, yes, perhaps waiting patiently. These kinds of photographs often romanticize realism, transforming even banal spaces into symbolic stages. Editor: You mean how every object seems to represent more than what's at surface level? The table, for example, feels like a sacrificial altar ready for its props to appear. And the chiaroscuro in both the main room, the hall and the faint glimmer from the window are strategically chosen to cast heavy, looming shadows, adding layers of mystery to the space, like the theater sets used for the plays by Maurice Maeterlinck. Curator: Indeed. While at first glance the work appears quite simply as a photograph of a commonplace home interior, a deeper reading reveals the image acting as a signifier for larger societal shifts at play during that period. As it conveys the concept of how to stage intimacy within a social unit: the Family. In the image we also detect social concepts, for example the relationship of interior and exterior and an interest for middle-class social realities of that period. Editor: Exactly. Look at the flower pot. The roundness against the orthogonal table feels very deliberate; roundness means, among other things, safety, protection and caring, while orthogonality, the way that the elements align according to perpendicular coordinates, means organization and independence. All those forces are at play here. Also, this photographer seems really intrigued with liminal spaces, thresholds… notice there's a space, almost like an empty window at the end of a hall to the side of the picture… a passageway between rooms. Curator: Precisely. Passageways from realism to symbolism and beyond. It leaves me wanting to step inside. Editor: It makes me pause, actually. Think of what worlds have been staged here!