ROTTERDAM.- Wedding photographers capture for eternity the ‘most beautiful day’ in a couple’s life. For almost twenty-five years, Paul Breuker has been photographing the most special and intimate moments of weddings, both in front of and behind the scenes, from putting on the dress and the nerves beforehand, to the couple’s going away. The photography exhibition ‘Love & Marriage’, which can be seen at the Kunsthal Rotterdam, presents heart-warming images of these personal moments. This year’s ode to photography is devoted to the theme ‘Look! My Happiness.’

Paul Breuker is a true people’s photographer. He loves the characters he photographs and can tell an entire story with just a single image. The bridegroom who decides to put on a different pair of trousers on the way to the wedding, the bride and groom that are so hungry that they stop on the way to get chips, and the baby that won’t sleep surrounded by the throngs of people and is therefore laid down on the grass. There is nothing that Breuker can’t capture during the wedding ceremony itself; he is the silent photographer that records it all. When seated in the front of a wedding car with his lens focused on the couple in the back, he captures moments in which official roles are momentarily dropped and the bride and groom are most at one with themselves. Take the blonde bride, for example, sitting in her white gown between her father and mother; their expressions are almost identical. The viewer searches for similarities and differences. The photograph is as serene as the bride.

Undisguised

Paul Breuker has photographed around two hundred bridal couples in his life, resulting in thousands of photos that reflect the romance of weddings. Sometimes moving, sometimes amusing, and almost always highly recognisable situations. The images often show the bride and groom and their families in undisguised form, stripped of all the usual glamour that is so typical of wedding photography. He captures the most beautiful but also the most emotional moments. The bride who, on the morning of her wedding, is sitting on the bed gently stroking the face of her seriously ill father. It is not until later that you notice the neatly shod artificial leg in the background. The man is bursting with pride as he looks at his exquisitely beautiful daughter; it would be one of the last photographs of them together.