The ‘Imagemakers’ section investigates how a photograph influences our view of reality. This week: an image from Garmerwolde that appears to the viewer differently than the photographer intended.
Sometimes the difference between what a photo tells (or better: what a photographer wants his photo to tell) and how it comes across to the viewer is quite big. That’s the case here, but that’s how it is. First the circumstances.
It is Tuesday, April 25, 2023, the day that the cabinet responds to the parliamentary inquiry into gas extraction in Groningen. Prime Minister Rutte and State Secretary Vijlbrief van Mijnbouw have come to village hall De Leeuw in Garmerwolde to tell how ‘The Hague’ has survived sixty years of ‘greedy gas extraction’ (which is accounted for by Volkskrantreporter Jurre van den Berg) thinks he will make amends.
The room is filled with curious, expectant Groningers and the press. Framed flags and posters of the local harmony hang on the walls. In addition to three bright camera lights, I count no less than twelve mood lights. The clock on the wall says that it is 5 to 2 in the afternoon and that must be correct, because the politicians are supposed to sit behind the table at 2 o’clock and – yes, there they are, all the way from The Hague, give them a big round of applause, ladies and gentlemen…
I’m getting ahead of myself again. ANP photographer Sem van der Wal (24) initially stood in the back of the room, with the rest of the journalists. Before that he had stood outside, he says on the phone, to see how Rutte and Vijlbrief arrived. He’d walked out of the room ahead of them and he’d thought, “Either way, I’ll take a picture as they walk through the center of the room.” A photo in which the waiting Groningers, about whom it all revolved that day, also appeared. Moreover, those are always those nice informal moments, much better than when people are officially and static behind a table.
And so it went. Van der Wal took the picture he had in mind of the two men in the aisle, Rutte in front, followed by Vijlbrief. The image subsequently appeared online at NOS, RTL News and on the website of de Volkskrant. That’s how it came to the viewer. And he (okay, me then) wondered if the traveling circus had settled in Garmerwolde.
Because sorry, it looks a bit like that: as if the well-known comic duo Mark and Hans are already warming up the room for the main act. Rutte with a slightly amused look at the front, followed by Vijlbrief with a jolly expression and his elegant, almost always purple tie and scarf. The audience is ready, pictures are being taken, off we go. Wouldn’t that be secretly the reason that the photo was published relatively often?
Sem van der Wal does not agree at all. Comic duo? fun? “I wouldn’t say that,” he says. The Secretary of State may have been greeting someone he knew just as the photo was taken. Moreover, the photographer adds, Vijlbrief was clearly emotional later at the table when it came to the duped Groningen residents and the damage caused by years of gas extraction by the government.
What I see in a snapshot and what Van der Wal experienced in De Leeuw village hall are two different things. We are now trying to put these together with mutual understanding, which is instructive for one of us in any case.
Isn’t Hans Vijlbrief, with that purple and that mischievous look, just a very rewarding subject for photographers, I’m still trying. ‘He is a pleasant politician to photograph,’ answers Van der Wal, tried and tested at the School of Journalism. ‘Without wanting to make a value judgment about it.’ I give up.