On occasion, the editors of Sight Unseen spot a story about creativity told from a viewpoint that’s not unlike our own. This one comes, via the blog Another Something, from the website of Amsterdam-based photographer Niels Helmink, whose 2008 series Shopkeepers documents the personalities and interiors of a fast-disappearing retail landscape. Click here to view the whole portfolio, and here to purchase Helmink’s Shopkeepers book.

“At first sight, Niels Helmink’s methodology used in his series Shopkeepers is reminiscent of the followers of the German “Becher School” in Düsseldorf. The photographer has tried to be as consistent as possible about including certain elements in each photograph. Besides the counter, in most of the images a stairway can be seen somewhere in the recesses of the store, or a door, which leads to “the back,” the living quarters or a storeroom. Very often you also see clocks — metaphors, according to Helmink, for the way in which the shopkeepers deal with the concept of time.”

“Although the wideness of of the images is strongly reminiscent of the panoramic photographs of Andreas Gursky, a product of the art academy in Düsseldorf, with Niels Helmink, this fanned-out view serves another purpose: not detachment, but involvement in his subject matter. The whole wacky shop has to be on the negative. Every old tube, every broken fluorescent light, every bouquet of fake flowers has to be in the picture in order to preserve the interior from oblivion.”

“The wide-angle view is meant to draw viewers into the picture in order to involve them in the subject matter, to engage them, if you will. And even though each of the shopkeepers looks equally serious (the photographer expressly asked them not to smile), and Helmink has built up his series typologically (he carefully chose the types of stores) — he succeeds in doing this.” — Merel Bem, freelance art and photography critic