It must have been a special affair in the De Nooijer house in the eighties. The house was often thoroughly renovated for the photos that Paul de Nooijer took at that time – staged scenes that resemble theater pieces. Rooms were re-papered, furniture was moved and covered with exotic fabrics. Friends, family, De Nooijer himself and his wife Françoise Neeteson and son Menno posed as actors for the photos.
So there is an image from 1984in which De Nooijer and Françoise sit at the table in their own living room like Tarzan and Jane, she in a leopard suit on a leopard sofa, he with bare torso and a meager loincloth, a wild floral motif on the wall behind them. It is a good example of the photography that De Nooijer became so famous for: slightly surreal, staged images, often with a humorous touch.
Paul de Nooijer passed away on Friday, December 12, at the age of 82.
Due to the intensive collaboration of the De Nooijer family, you may not always be able to speak of ‘a work by Paul de Nooijer’. The young Menno had been featured in his father’s work since his childhood, and since the 1990s they have worked together as full creative partners and made experimental art installations with photography and video.
In the documentary The final tricka double portrait of the duo that was broadcast in 2017 The Hour of the Wolf (NTR), it became clear how much of a family business they formed in their studio in Zeeland. Although Françoise downplayed her role, saying that she mainly appeared in many of her partner’s films because she was simply available. Yet it was she who took the photo The grass sweeper (1977), who was inducted into the hall of fame of Dutch photography in the Dutch Photo Museum in Rotterdam in 2021. Another surreal image showing a man, Paul de Nooijer himself, standing in the living room ironing a piece of lawn with a pink iron.
Dreamlike scenes
Paul de Nooijer was born in Eindhoven in 1943. After high school, he trained at the Academy for Industrial Design and became interested in photography through his teacher Frans Zwartjes. He worked for a while as an advertising photographer, until he was able to develop as a photographer and soon as a filmmaker with the help of scholarships in the 1970s.
His photography had a surreal and magical realist character, with dream-like scenes in richly decorated interiors, erotic scenes with a lot of nudity, often made with a wide-angle lens, which had an additional alienating effect. In his prints he often opted for a graphic approach, with many shades of gray and a coarse grain. His film style, he often made experimental and associative videos without narrative structure, lent itself well to video clips: De Nooijer made two video clips with the Golden Earring in the 1980s.
Paul de Nooijer had known for some time that he had prostate cancer. Recent films that he made together with his son Menno were all about looking back and approaching farewell. With their latest films, Paul, Menno and Françoise wanted to break the taboo about talking about death, they said in 2022 in The Filmkrant. That year they also presented two books about their oeuvre: Is Heaven Blue? with images from the more than a hundred films they made, and Is Heaven Red?with photographic work.
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