Kitchen Portraits by Erik Klein Wolterink

I like photo projects that gives insight into the private domestic life of people, like Rania Matar’s “A Girl And Her Room”, James Mollison’s “Where Children Sleep”, Stephanie de Rouge’s “In Your Fridge”, and Jason Travis’s “What’s In Your Bag?”. That’s why I like photographer Erik Klein Wolterink’s project “Keukens” that gives us a sneak peek into the kitchen of various ethnic groups living in Amsterdam.

In order to do this, Wolterink opened all cupboards, drawers, fridges, ovens, and photographed each piece individually and then reconstructed the entire kitchen in one image. In the photographer’s own words:

A well-stocked kitchen refers to Turkish cookery with goat’s cheese and halal sausage. But the mix for homemade apple pie is a witness of an open attitude towards other customs. A mother shows her African roots with a plastic Voltic Sparkling Water bottle filled with palm oil. Female students undermine our prejudices with a spotless kitchen. In the kitchen of a family with growing children, a packet of Korma curry of Pakistani descent and cardamom pods try to square themselves with Dutch kitchen habits. Here the Dutch sandwich culture leaves its traces in the sandwich wrappers in the drawer, the sandwiches in the fridge and the Nutella chocolate paste in the sink cupboard next to the abrasive agent. The kitchen as metaphor of a complex, multicultural reality.