"RAW" (Book Review)

Vanessa Van Houten has traveled a lot. She has moved from Munich to Melbourne, then Jakarta. And in these moves, she lost all her contacts. Traumatically severed ties with family, friends, her job, she experienced what every migrant soul experience on her own skin every day: the loss.

And as a photographer, she decided to exorcise this black hole that was gnawing at her heart by making a book: RAW.

RAW is essential not only in its style—it is raw, indeed. All portraits, all in the same way: same light and background and bare skin—and some lines of text. RAW is truly in the sense of without filters or manipulations; it is rough and real. Where the idea counts more than the result, like a work of contemporary art.

  

The portraits don't have to be aesthetically beautiful; she doesn't care about that. They just have to show themselves and answer a question. As Henri Cartier-Bresson said: “For me, making a portrait is the most difficult thing. Very difficult. It's a question mark resting on someone.”

Well, Vanessa Van Houten transforms that question mark directly into a question “What have you lost in your life?" to friends and strangers, of different nationalities and ages.

On each double-page, there is a portrait and their response. There are more than fifty portraits as if in this way Vanessa could heal her wounds. It is a basic, simple and intense book. Very well edited from an editorial point of view with a beautiful hardcover, in the style of Afterhours Books.

There are real tears.

And, for sure, each of us will be able to recognize ourselves in one of these faces and their stories. 

And feel less alone.

(c)Afterhours Books.

   

RAW by Vanessa Van Houten

Hardcover

20.5 x 26 cm (Portrait)

132 pages in full color

English

Afterhours books

ISBN: 978-602-6990-09-9

This review was first published in the Indonesian language at the website of Buku Foto Indonesia 

Vanessa Van Houten: “RAW” (Afterhours Books, 2015)

Italian version