The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves by Awoiska van der Molen

‘I only take a photograph when all the distractions have faded away and there’s no sense of time anymore. The moment that you’re no longer busy with yourself: experiencing Point Zero’. While this deeper layer of meaning may not be immediately apparent in her images, it is likely still perceptible to many viewers.

One could say that these illuminated windows function as a screen between the photographer (or the observer) and the world, between a psychological inner world and the external world of things. Through the windows, we catch a glimpse of the life behind them, yet there is no substantial contact. The windows serve as a barrier to the desire for safety and companionship as well as a glimpse of it. They simultaneously represent the longing for connection as well as comfort with distance. In this sense, the windows symbolise the existential loneliness that most of us must come to terms with to a greater or lesser degree.

Van der Molen’s photographs can be seen as psychological spaces in which the photographer searches for something she only understands in retrospect. For instance, her black-and-white landscape images taken between 2009 and 2021, with their many shades of black, grey, and white, are more than just a record of the physical characteristics of an expanse.

During solitary walks in the remote wilderness, Van der Molen attempts to penetrate the essence of a place. Experiencing the return to what is at the core of existence – our deeply-rooted relationship with the earth, its cyclical rhythms, the cosmos of which we are part – is what she visualises in these images.