Reframing PJU (2012-ongoing)
‘Reframing PJU’ is a long-term artistic research project with an open end. Andrea Stultiens ‘reframes’ the photographic legacy of Dr Paul Julien (1901-2001). The photographs he made on the African continent between 1932 and 1962, just like his stories, played an important role in the image that the Netherlands had in the middle of the last century of Equatorial Africa. Paul Julien’s photographic legacy is now in the care of the Nederlands Fotomuseum, where it is identified with the three-letter code PJU.
Both the production of these photographs and the stories they told are now viewed with very different eyes, because of the cultural violence they emerged from and bear witness to. However, the meaning and value of photographs is not entirely defined by the intentions of their creator. Every encounter with a photograph offers the possibility of parrying the narrative or offering alternative views; for the meaning is not in the photograph itself, but created in the encounter with the image. Andrea Stultiens formulates such alternative, even corrective values by ‘reframing’ the photographs in the PJU collection with the people whose cultural heritage is depicted. In doing so, the project aims to contribute to the debates on decolonisation and question the authority of Paul Julien, without denying the possible relevance of his work.
The presentation during ‘The Makeable Mind’ shows ‘reframed’ photographs produced by Paul Julien and Andrea Stultiens in 1934 and 2020 respectively, as well as images recently made in Amsterdam-Zuidoost, in collaboration with the Sierra Leonean-Dutch artist Abu Kanu.
historical images: Paul Julien (from the collection of the Nederlands Fotomuseum) | mask: Abu Kanu
