Cuny JanssenWhatever Works

Twenty years ago I began photographing children all over the world. My first journey took me to South India. At 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. For six months I took photographs and had conversations with the women there and with members of the families who had taken me in as a guest. It was not only I who had many questions; they had them too. Besides the subject of children, it was always about love. ‚In your country there are no arranged marriages,‘ many of them asked in surprise, for I spoke above all with young women who, like me, were unmarried. When I asked them what they thought about marrying a stranger, they often replied: ‚I am ready, let him come. If the cup is empty, we fill it; if it is dirty, we clean it.‘ Everything they said, everything I saw around me, surprised me and nourished doubts, but also compelled great admiration for their courage and their faith. Their arranged marriages were a riddle to me, and yet they fascinated me too. One of the ways for me to understand them better were the portraits I made. I photographed women and men of various ages, engaged or betrothed couples as well as married ones. After twenty years I am now looking at these portraits of Indian couples again, for only now, having myself been confronted for 16 years with the challenges of married life, has their context become more familiar to me personally. Indian society is changing rapidly, and the younger generation today grows up between the extremes of a globally networked 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 was recently dissolved after 25 years – a shock for all involved. My daughters are growing up in Amsterdam; for their generation it seems entirely normal to have divorced or separated parents and to live in complex family structures. Given that the subjects of love and relationships fill pages in newspapers and magazines, it is clear that the last word has not yet been spoken – quite apart from how complicated it is for oneself to acquaint one’s own daughters with LGBT matters nowadays. Conversations, reading and my own experience have taught me that relationships require a great deal of work and understanding, and that every kind of relationship is, or becomes, an arrangement. I think that love and life have much in common with gardening: it is always hard to lay down any rules, but time, neglect and chance often bring forth unexpected beauty. The trick lies only in recognising beauty and, when it shows itself, making the best of it. (Cuny Janssen in her text)