Today opens in the City Hall of Amsterdam an exhibition I designed for photographer Geert Snoeijer, on the Holland Society of New York.
These portraits by Dutch photographer Geert Snoeijer do something special with time and space. We see men from today’s USA who are connected with Holland in a distant past. These men are all male descendents from the first inhabitants of the Dutch settlement in the New World, New Amsterdam, now New York. Their names remind us of that Dutch descent.
The way the photographer has portrayed these men, reinforces the tension between then and now and between there and here: the pictures of these very contemporary men remind us of old paintings of the Dutch Masters: stately, in clair obscure, complete with status symbol. You see and understand immediately: these men are rich, powerful, successful: they represent the historical connection of today’s America with its founders.
By knowing that the portrayed have Dutch blood, their power, their success reflects even just a little on us, the Dutch. Looking at these pictures, these paintings, one hopes to find the Dutch Soul, and to discover “the Dutchman” in these portraits.
But, as Princess Máxima of the Netherlands already ascertained a few years ago: the Dutch Soul, a singular Dutch Identity does not exist. And it is certainly not to be found in these portraits of descendants of the founders of New Amsterdam. The Dutch blood in their veins is diluted through the generations. There is nowhere in the portraits anything in sight of what makes a Dutchman a Dutchman. Except that name. And that history. The successes of America – those of the country and its people – are in no way attributable to the Netherlands. What remains is an illusion: a non-existing relationship between the Netherlands and the United States of America, kept alive by both Americans and Dutch who crave to be part of each other’s impressive history.
And that is the real power of these beautiful portraits: one continues to look at them. One keeps looking for that illusion.
Marc Prüst