Noordhollands Dagblad 20-05-2005

Decay and renewal in 'Helpless' from Rob Sweebe.

Hoorn - In recent years the position of the photographer as an artist has grown quite emancipated and photography is being considered a full-fletched form of art. In the Netherlands this is evident by the appearance of photo museums, photo galleries and photo festivals. Thus, there will be a photo festival in Naarden-Vesting from May 14 up to and including June 12.

At the same time documentary photography is under pressure because of the abundance of images. It seems as if there is always someone at the scene with a camera. Therefore it takes an excellent photographer to catch that extraordinary image which distinguishes itself from all the others. This is one of the reasons why quite some photographers choose for staged photography, next to producing documentary work.

Debut

At the beginning of last year the photographer Rob Sweebe from Bemmel made his debut in the Park Gallery in Hoorn. This exhibition contained almost exclusively documentary photography. The central topic was the river landscape, but also poetic photos around the theme of decay were showed.
Only one -at that time very recent- photo depicted a staged image, which bulged with symbolism. This intriguing work, showing two stone statues of saints next to contrasting living women, proved to be the forerunner of the present exposition, bearing the title 'Helpless'. This exhibition consists of a rounded off series of ten photos of which  five in colour and five in black and white. The photos contain comibations of old and new images and have been made with the aid of digital techniques.
Rob Sweebe was born in 1948 in Bali, Indonesia. In 1960 he came to the Netherlands. He attended the HBS in Weert and obtained the certificate of MO drawing. Next he studied photography at the Academy of Breda.

Gab

This study disappointed him because of the small amount of attention, which was given to the technical aspects of photography. He filled this gab by also doing the four-year training at the professional school for photography. After his studies Sweebe started his own business in Eindhoven. He worked as a publicity photographer, made portraits and wedding reports. As from 1997 he gradually decreased his commercial activities and started to sort his archive of images for expositions and festivals. At the moment he almost exclusively makes free photography. In fact, he also used to make free work on a modest scale during the time he used to work by order.

The themes he used to nourish at the beginning of his career -some thirty years ago- were poetry, decay and renewal. They are still at the centre of this recent exposition. Sweebe reluctantly observes particular changes in our life environment, against wich the individual is rather defenceless. As an exaple he mentions the construction of the Betuwelijn in his personal living area, seizing beloved grounds. About this subject he says: 'The thing that haunts me is the disappearance of the characteristic uniqueness of an erea, the unstoppable advancement of uniformity'.

The series Helpless therefore, arisen from the question: 'How do I express the powerlessness I perpetually feel, seeing that certain poetry crumble away from my surrounding world?' Sweebe chose to represent that helplessness symbolically by carefully staging elements of images.
The idea for the series Helpless already arose in 2003, when he found architecture with the right atmosphere during a trip through the former DDR. The photos show dilapidated factory halls, staircases, viaducts and old tiled spaces. Over the images dwells the haze of abandonment. Nevertheless there is not only sadness to be seen, because the images suggest hope and renewal as well. Sweebe achives this effect by, in a decent way, placing naked women in ramshackle builidings.
The staged character is quite clear, for any woman would know better than to walk around naked in such ominous spaces.

The series Helpless also embodies the critical way in which the photographer scrutinizes his own work. More than once he is of the opinion that his work did not turn out quite perfect enough. In those cases it tends too much to sombreness and pessimism. However, it seems that Rob Sweebe found his personal form in this most recent work, in which decay versus renewal is the theme.

LIDA BONNEMA