From Bertien van Manen's book: 'Let's Sit Down Before We Go' (2012).
Traveling the world and immersing herself in the lives of the people she photographs, Bertien van Manen produces intimate documentary pictures that reveal the poetry and poignancy of the ordinary and the everyday: a meal, an old ping pong table, a bus ride, a couple asleep on a bed. Inspired by Robert Frank’s landmark photographic essay, The Americans (1955-56), van Manen focuses on the easily overlooked, the humble, and the quietly personal.