Visual Dialects in the Volkskrant Magazine

By Ohad Ben Shimon

A couple of weeks ago my fellow students from the KABK, and I, were invited to visit
the Volkskrant headquarters in Amsterdam. There we met up with chief photo editor of
the Volkskrant Magazine, Theo Audenaerd, and junior photo editor, Annelies Kuiper. On
the conference table were the latest editions of the Volkskrant Magazine. Famous faces of
different Dutch celebrities smiled at me from the various covers.

It took me some time to realize it, but after playing with the different editions of the
magazine, something caught my eye. The back cover of the September 9 th 2005 edition of
the magazine exhibited an advertisement for Marlboro cigarettes with a handsome,
unshaven face on it. The portrait of this American idol really affected me. I started
playing with my facial hair.

Whilst playing with my facial hair and the October 15 th 2005 edition of the magazine, a
thought crossed my mind. Theo Maassen smiled at me with his green eyes and his
charming unshaven face. I looked back at the September Marlboro advertisement, and
realized that they look like the same photo. The similarities are striking. Both portraits of
these handsome men are looking at me from their left side, both of them the same
distance from me. Both images show only the face. Same grin, same eyes, same nose, and
same skin. Everything in these two images looked the same! Yet one is an American
brand of cigarettes portraying its ideal man as a rough and yet ‘reachable’ ideal and the
other is a weekend editorial magazine of one of the leading newspapers in Holland
covering a famous comedian. One is on the front cover with the title Volkskrant
Magazine next to it and the other is on the back cover with the brand Marlboro classics
on it.

After being fascinated by the resemblance of these two images I did some homework. I
checked up more editions of the magazine. It turned out that in half a year of Volkskrant
Magazine’s there were half a dozen of matching couples like this. On one edition the
front cover shows usually a studio portrait of a famous Dutch celebrity and on the
matching back cover an advertisement for a brand like Marlboro, Jean-Paul Gaultier or
Rabobank. I concluded that there is something interesting behind this. The resemblances
could not be just pure coincidence I thought to myself. I was confused for I felt as if
someone is playing a game with me. I felt the editorial content could be too easily
confused as commercial material, something I think, the consumer should be protected
from.

I was looking for answers so I asked for a

fellow classmate’s opinion, Michael de
Kooter from the Photography Department at
the Kabk Art Academy. ”You shouldn’t be
confused or troubled with these similarities, Ohad”, Michael said to me. “It’s not a
commercial game. The Volkskrant Magazine
is not going to sell more copies because their
editorial images look more like an advertising
campaign of a big advertising company like
Marlboro. It’s not effective. In my opinion it
serves more the function of Art. These
similarities might have been brought together
because the Volkskrant Magazine is interested
in making a link between the different
editions and the different images that are on
its covers, regardless of if it is of editorial or
commercial content. It is important for the
magazine to make this kind of link. It makes
the magazine more of a unity. It is meant to
give a visual clue from one edition to the
next, so that you have a feeling that you have
something big and whole in your hands, not
just a magazine.”

I was starting to realize that Michael might

have a point there. However I was still very
keen to get to the bottom of how exactly these
connections are brought together and who is
responsible for them. If I knew who was
responsible I would be able to go up to him
and tell him that I am not happy with the way
things are going and that they should have
asked me before. Yes, I was stupid.

”You can speculate many things Ohad.”

Michael said to me. “However, I’m not sure
where it will lead you. There might be many
explanations, and maybe the people responsible for this don’t want people outside of the
Magazine to know about it. But you shouldn’t think of it as a conspiracy, but as an
interesting phenomenon which is aimed at creating ‘a noise’, an eco, a new atmosphere.
We should be fascinated by it. It gives us the readers a more interesting experience.”

Again, Michael had a point. The possibility of there being a mutual visual language that
both editorial and commercial genres are using in order to create a new and more exciting
language did sound exciting. Perhaps our visual language has reached a point at which it
can relate and refer within itself to itself. It is often said that in recent years there has
been a disappearing of borders within the different mediums and practices of art which is
also largely felt in or maybe influenced by different movements in culture and society.
We use today mobile phones to create and produce images with built-in cameras. A
machine which originally started out as a convenient way for people to communicate
with one another, turned out to be a useful piece of machinery to have around if you are
interested in making a nice portrait of your beloved dog for your desktop. Perhaps visual
language has reached a point at which it is no longer just a form of communication.
Maybe cover photos are not just a format of a Magazine to tell the readers what is waiting
inside their pages. Maybe there is now also room for actually creating something new
with the language we have acquired. We are able to produce what Michael calls ‘Art’ by
matching images that traditionally belong to different ‘dialects’ in photography. I choose
to call these different genres, dialects, because we are actually talking about the same
visual language which is being used in different ways, for different purposes, and set to
different dispositions. The act of uniting these different forms of visual language, like in
the example of the different cover images of the Volkskrant Magazine opens up our eyes
to something new, something experimental, something refreshing. I have learnt whilst
working on this topic that this should be something to embrace, to be amused by, to
encourage. These images are mere reflections of us. They show us what we can do with
our visual language, what we can say and what we can hear.
I would be very interested in hearing what other people think about this subject.

Ohad Ben Shimon, 2005