Cuny Janssen: Whatever Works

Travelling to India 20 years ago

"Twenty years ago, I started photographing children all over the world. My first trip took me to South India. First I lived in a church women's centre in the city of Chennai in the province of Tamil Nadu, formerly Madras, then in Mugaiyur, a small village. I spent six months taking photos and talking to residents and members of the families who had taken me in as a guest. It wasn't just me who had lots of questions, they did too. In addition to the topic of children, it was always about love. "There are no arranged marriages in your country," many asked in surprise, as I mainly spoke to young women who, like me, were unmarried. When I asked them how they felt about marrying a stranger, they often replied: "I'm ready, let him come. If the cup is empty, we'll fill it, if it's dirty, we'll clean it." Everything they said, everything I saw around me, surprised me, fuelled doubts, but also forced me to admire their courage and faith. Their arranged marriages were a mystery to me, yet they also fascinated me. One of the ways for me to understand them better was through the portraits I took. I photographed women and men of different ages, engaged or promised couples as well as married couples. After twenty years, I am now looking at these portraits of Indian couples again because it is only now, after 16 years of facing the challenges of married life myself, that their context has become more familiar to me personally. Indian society is changing rapidly and the younger generation today is growing up between the extremes of a globally connected world and the tradition of their grandparents. If it were up to the young, Indian tradition should be replaced by Western ideals of love and life as quickly as possible. But what do these ideals really look like? My brother's marriage recently ended in divorce after 25 years - a shock for everyone involved. My daughters are growing up in Amsterdam, for their generation it seems quite normal to have divorced or separated parents and to live in complex family structures. Given that the topics of love and relationships fill pages in newspapers and magazines, it is clear that the last word has not yet been spoken - not to mention how complicated it is for you to familiarise your own daughters with LGBT issues these days. Conversations, reading and personal experience have taught me that relationships require a lot of work and understanding and that any kind of relationship is or becomes an arrangement. I think love and life have a lot in common with gardening, it's always hard to make any rules, but time, neglect and chance often produce unexpected beauty. The trick is just to recognise beauty and, when it appears, to make the most of it." (Cuny Janssen in her text)