PHOTOGRAPHER BERT TEUNISSEN VISITS 100 FAMILIES TO PORTRAY THE ALLOWANCE AFFAIR - 13,000 KM TRAVELED, EVEN ABROAD

100 families affected by the benefits affair in the picture: 'The reality turned out to be so much more horrible' - it's just people like you and me!

The people he photographed still often haunt his mind. Just like he often has to think of the employees of the tax authorities who saddled innocent people with fine after penalty. “Some of the employees there really took pleasure in ruining others. If they knew that people were getting vacation pay or a Christmas bonus, they went straight to it. They called that package night.”

Saturday marks one year since the Rutte III cabinet fell over the benefits affair. In the book Decrypted. Fought back, an initiative by the SP, photographer Bert Teunissen (62) portrays a hundred affected families. “People have really been destroyed.”

Peter van BrummelenJanuary 13, 2022, 17:00

This is an ingeniously designed book. If you hold the book in your right hand and, like you do when you first explore a book, scroll through the pages with your left thumb forward, you'll see nothing but mysterious codes. CAP/UCF/21/224, for example. Or WBA/09/01004/MDS. If you switch hands and fan back to the back, you'll see pictures of families.

They are ordinary families. People who could be your neighbors, people like yourself. They sit on the couch at home, in often remarkably empty interiors, though. What binds the hundred families or households is that they are all victims of the benefits affair. They were wrongly suspected of fraud with childcare benefits. It led to a battle with the tax authorities that completely turned lives upside down, if not destroyed.

Making a file number human again

The purpose of the book Decrypted. Fought back is clear: give a face and make people who were reduced by the tax authorities to a file number a face and make them human again. Bert Teunissen (1959) made the portraits. He has been photographing since he was fifteen and has an impressive track record (he published in, among others) The New York Times country The Guardian), but he has never been so enthralled by an assignment before.

“The first one I photographed was a man in the Kolenkit neighborhood in Amsterdam. It was a father and daughter, but I did not see her. He owned almost nothing. I photographed the other people on their sofas, he only had a stool to sit on. A laptop pie was actually his only contact with the world. It was pitch black with him. The man has a serious eye defect, which will lead to blindness. He is now training a dog himself, who should be able to accompany him to the supermarket when the time comes.”

The memory still touches him. “I've done so many projects. Normally, when you take a first photo like that, you think: well, the headline is off. Here I knew: this is going to be tough. I thought I knew something about the benefits affair. I read the newspaper, watch the current affairs sections on TV. But the reality turned out to be so much more gruesome. People have really been destroyed, deliberately too. I have sometimes been shooting with tears in my eyes. When I got home, I pulled back into a corner with a notebook: I really had to write off what I had seen and heard.”

Tough Volvo 940 station wagon

The book Decrypted. Fought back published on behalf of the Socialist Party. Teunissen has no ties to the party. “I'm left-wing, but I've never voted SP before. It is, however, the party that brought this scandal to light. SP'er Renske Leijten did that with Pieter Omtzigt, and he was from a party I would never vote for. I have great respect for those two.”

There is a cool Volvo 940 station wagon in front of the door at Teunissen in Huizen. It is the car with which he crossed the whole of the Netherlands to take photos of victims. He worked on it for six weeks, seven days a week. 400 to 500 kilometers a day were normal. At the end of the project, the Volvo had added 13,000 kilometers.

“It was a huge job logistically,” says Teunissen. “The SP has a database of thousands of affected families. They were contacted asking if they wanted to contribute to a book. I started working with the positive reactions. I've seen every corner of the country, but I've also photographed in Belgium or Germany, to which some of those affected have fled.”

Packing night

Ten minutes, that's all he had to photograph a family. “But I have some experience, right,” says Teunissen, who is both a reporter and an advertising photographer. In the short time he spent talking to people, he was just as likely to hear terrible stories. “I'm thinking of the family whose twelve-year-old son had never been to the dentist in his life. I'm thinking about the woman whose four children were removed from home and who actually has no idea where they are.”

The people he photographed still often haunt his mind. Just like he often has to think of the employees of the tax authorities who saddled innocent people with fine after penalty. “Some of the employees there really took pleasure in ruining others. If they knew that people were getting vacation pay or a Christmas bonus, they went straight to it. They called that package night.”

Bert Teunissen: Explained. Fought back, ed. SP, 412 pages, €15.