Wytske van Keulen

We would come to doubt everything. And almost everyone would come to doubt.

‘The documentary photo project We would come to doubt everything… deals with Juan (Jan), a Brabant dentist who thirty years ago left
everything 
behind to start a new life in the remote mountain village of San Sebastian de Garabandal in Spain. Juan de la Torre leads the
life of a hermit and
has devoted himself to the ‘study of life’, immersing himself in books on religion, alternative philosophies, the falsification
of history and conspiracy 
theories.

Van Keulen visited Juan and took pictures of both the rugged, romantic mountain landscape around Garabandal and Juan’s daily life.

By enveloping her subject, leaving openings in the image sequence and occasionally adding existing archive material to her photographs,
the 
photographer is able to create a portrait of a mysterious figure. Van Keulen stretches the limits of the documentary genre, and explicitly
appeals 
to the viewer’s imagination.’ (Xander Karskens, 2008)

The work We would come to doubt everything... is presented in a book as well as a slide installation. For the book I asked artist/writer
Nickel van Duijvenboden to write a short fiction.The story is entitled Hohenau, after a village founded by German colonists in Paraguay.
Van Duijvenboden wrote the story through loose associations with my 
photographs. Though reality and fiction share some parallels,
the outcome is totally different.

Read here Verhaal met gaten, a lecture by Nickel van Duijvenboden about our cooporation for the book We would come to doubt everything...
(pdf, 12 pages, in Dutch).

Selection of images (30).