Marrigje de Maar: MOTHERSONG

The Dutch photographer Marrigje de Maar has sat as a guest in East-Karelian villages and homes, looking at and listening to the life in these quiet villages, photographing everyday atmospheres, kitchens and bedrooms.

Mothersong is like the sad song of Lemminkäinen’s mother in the Kalevala, like the echo of the old Karelian songs in these villages now mainly inhabited by old women, those grandmothers who sustain life. Mothers are also a source of the homeliness and hospitality that de Maar experienced in East Karelia (the Russian part of Karelia). One of the ladies told her the advice her grandmother gave her: Your home should always be open to all visitors, no matter what their nationality, and you should always have bread and salt to offer guests – and hot water in the samovar.

In Marrigje de Maar’s work, spaces and the traces of the life lived in them are of central importance. Her earlier photographic series depict both inhabited and deserted rooms in the Netherlands and in Eastern Finland. Her most recent project is in China, where she has been working since 2005.

In Finland, de Maar’s pictures are comparable, for instance, to Pekka Turunen’s or Esko Männikkö’s photographs of people and their homes in remote districts. But there are still differences to ponder. Are they caused by the different country, or because the photographer is a foreigner? Or is it the fact that she does not usually take pictures of people? Or maybe because both de Maar and her subjects (or the people who live in the houses in the pictures) are women?

The same villages – Vuokkiniemi, Jyskyjärvi, Uhtua – were visited by Finnish photographers and folklore researchers in the early 20th century. The area is familiar to Finns from the photographer I.K. Inha’s photographic book on East Karelia from 1894.

Pressetext

Marrigje de Maar
MOTHERSONG