Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography

Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography

Ode to Photography

The almost 100 photographs in this book comprise a Gallery of Honour. Each is more than special in its own way in terms of artistic and social qualities, while as a whole they tell the story of 180 years of photography from the Netherlands – from the daguerreotypes of the 19th century to the contemporary works of Rineke Dijkstra and Dustin Thierry.

With these images, we can both see and feel the richness of the work of photographers who explored borders and were not afraid to cross them, both with respect to their profession and their country. Their photographs tell as many stories and show as many perspectives as there are entries in this book. Not only that, these photographs demonstrate how radically the technology and social function of photography has evolved.

The task that a committee of five experts was asked to fulfil at the end of 2019 was in fact impossible: select 100 photos by photographers from the Netherlands that are distinctive, convincing and have iconic value. Nonetheless, they intrepidly got to work and, based on their knowledge and internal discussions, this group of curators and photographers came up with a balanced selection. With one caveat: “We have not selected the 100th photograph – we are leaving that choice up to the viewer.”

work that, consciously or unconsciously, was not chosen, not noticed, not known, not sufficiently appreciated. The public can fill in this place as they choose. In this way, the Gallery of Honour hopes to call itself into question, so that everyone feels invited to think about and contribute to this selection.

By doing this, the Nederlands Fotomuseum is saying: we are guardians of the photographic heritage of the Netherlands, but we also realise that there are certain definitive photos that are not in the national public collections. In compiling the Gallery of Honour, we worked therefore closely with our fellow guardians of photographic heritage, and in the first place with the Rijksmuseum. As result of this joint effort, the Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography has become an ode to photography from the Netherlands and to the many photographers whose special insights have made it what it is today.

Take a look for yourself, and when you come to the last page, add the 100th photograph!

Birgit Donker Director

The Gallery of Honour therefore consists of 99+1 works, because one work is missing: in its stead there is an empty place, symbolising the

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1 Portrait of Charlotte Asser, Daughter of the Photographer, Amsterdam, circa 1842 Eduard Isaac Asser

From a distance of almost 180 years, behind the damage on the surface of the image, you see an average little girl with beautiful ringlets, dressed in a pullover with short sleeves. She is looking at her father, who has just acquired a large wooden camera mounted on legs from Paris, and has told her she must sit stock-still and look at him while he slowly counts on his fingers until the cap can go back on the lens. So as not to move, she holds her arm in her hand. Besides being an amateur photographer, Asser was an amateur painter, and he probably was well acquainted with the portrait tradition in Dutch painting. After all, he took a very classical portrait of his daughter in what is known as the ‘three-quarter’ pose: the model’s face is turned diagonally forward at an angle such that the nose does not protrude past the edge of the cheek. At the same time, Charlotte had to look towards him, and that may explain the slightly uncomfortable gaze, which may also have been prompted by the question of what kind of mystery was going on in that silent wooden box. For that matter, it must also have been a great experiment for her father, for he could not yet have had much experience with this new invention. Probably he had never even held an example of a successful daguerreotype in his hands.

Daguerreotypes were unique and costly images, which actually were polished pieces of silver-plated copper with a highly mirrored appearance. Sometimes they were dipped in a gold solution, as this daguerreotype was.

That made the fine silver in the image layer more durable, and so we can still see that Charlotte had corkscrew curls. FG

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9 The Handelskade, Willemstad, Curaçao, 1885-1890 Fotostudio Soublette et Fils

Activity on the Handelskade in Willemstad, the capital of Curaçao and, when this photo was taken, also of the Dutch Antilles. In some respects it is a timeless image, because for centuries Curaçao had been the centre of overseas trade from every conceivable point of the compass. Perhaps those large sacks were filled with Curaçao’s sea salt, an export product in great demand. Other goods may have come from nearby Venezuela, for which Willemstad served as a transit port. What the photo does not show, but painfully reminds us of today, is that Curaçao was a Dutch colony where, from 1665 to 1863, people enslaved by the Dutch West Indies Company were traded – a disgraceful and humanly degrading activity that was a major source of income for the Netherlands.

The Curaçaoan photographer Robert Joseph Soublette and his son Tito owned a photo studio in Willemstad. From roughly 1880 to 1920, Soublette et Fils made photographic portraits and cartes-de-visite. The Soublettes also had their specialties, such as panoramic photos and portraits of very large groups. They are considered Curaçao’s most important photographers from that period.

The fact that they were esteemed photographers is shown by the fact that Queen Wilhelmina gave them permission to call themselves ‘purveyor to Her Majesty the Queen’ in 1906. The studio was extremely professionally equipped, with ideal daylight conditions and gear imported from America. Besides portraits, they also photographed the commercial activities on the island, landscapes and folk types – a popular and widespread genre that can be termed racist which generated the necessary income through the sale of postcards, among other things. Their special eye for composition is clearly evident in this view of the Handelskade. FG

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27 Portrait of the Dancer Estella Reed, 1931 Paul Citroen

In 1926, Citroen and his artist friend Otto Umbehr experimented at length with the photo camera and the portrait. Together, they more or less invented modern portrait photography. Up until then, the genre had adhered to rigid painterly traditions with clichéd poses and lighting.

Influenced by the teachings at the Bauhaus, where both studied at the time, the two artists took the liberty of using the camera in a very informal manner, for instance by holding it very close to a face, taking a relatively oblique standpoint or experimenting with contrasts in lighting.

When Citroen made portrait photography his profession in the years between 1929 and 1935, he dropped the experimental aspect, but the freedom he had acquired remained evident in the casual, relaxed atmosphere of his portraits, which now seem ‘normal’ to us but were completely new at the time. Citroen mainly focused his camera on his – big – circle of artist friends. The American dancer Estella Reed was one of them. He portrayed her various times, always in a different pose. This portrait, where she so strikingly tilts her head, is a fine example of the liberation of the portrait from the straitjacket of the hackneyed rules of art.

Citroen also painted several portraits of Reed. The question is which he preferred more, as not much later he would switch from the camera to the brush, drawing pencil, charcoal and paper. An artist should be able to proceed from the material, he felt. That, too, was something he had learned at the Bauhaus. FG

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50 Construction of the Haringvliet Dam, Zeeland, 1961 Aart Klein

“Making a photograph is drawing with white on black,” Aart Klein once said. Pushing black-and-white photo­ graphy to the limit, until only true black and true white remained – that’s what he was very good at. In this photo, a construction crew is working on the Haringvliet Dam, one of the large projects in the Delta Works. They are weaving a framework of rebar. All that we can see are silhouettes against a play of lines; Klein removed all the other details and subtleties. This image is one of the finest examples of his style. Instead of a photo, it indeed looks like a drawing or a scene from a shadow play. In order to achieve that effect, you not only need low-sensitivity film in your camera but also the requisite experience in the darkroom.

Klein deliberately printed on extra ‘hard’ photo paper.

Aart Klein started out as a theatre photographer but soon switched to reportage and documentary photography.

He still had a love of drama, however, and you can clearly see that in photographs like this one. In his own way, Klein expressed the optimistic spirit of the reconstruction in his work for, among other things, the Algemeen Handelsblad newspaper, businesses and the industrial sector. In 1967, he published a hefty book of photos about the Delta Works, titled Delta: Currents to Future. The book is a showcase for both Holland’s glorious conquest of the sea and Klein’s often lyrical ‘white-on-black’ photography. He placed this photo on the cover. FG

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51 Johan Cruijff, Piet Keizer, Klaas Nuninga and Sjaak Swart, 1967 Paul Huf

Four football heroes, Sjaak Swart, Klaas Nuninga, Piet Keizer and Johan Cruijff, are photographed together here for a cover of Elseviers Weekblad, a weekly that devoted an article to these top players from an Amsterdam football club with the name of a well-known cleaning product. Paul Huf placed them close together in an attitude that suggests action. He undoubtedly determined the precise position of each head, hand or foot, for that was his style: polished and with great attention to even the smallest details. Three of the faces lie exactly on the same diagonal line, while the fourth accentuates the counter-diagonal and introduces tension in the image.

Huf was an esteemed portrait photographer with a studio in Amsterdam. One of his specialisms was group portraits with carefully chosen backgrounds or customised sets, also in his advertising work. In the late 60s, he earned a name for himself with trailblazing fashion reportages for publications such as the glossy monthly magazine Avenue: full-colour, on exotic locations like the Red Square in Moscow and with an un-Dutch flair. His portraits of the royal family, the many LP covers in the Famous Classics series, and a long-running advertising campaign for a Dutch brand of beer in printed publications and on television made him known amongst the general public.

As far as those ‘details’ are concerned: the brand names on the shoes had to be glossed over to avoid making plugs.

That did not detract from the glamour of this photo in the least. No one had ever before photographed football heroes as if it were a fashion shoot. Craftsmanship is Mastership, Huf would have said. FG

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74 Nick Cave, London 1996 Anton Corbijn

London, on a cold day in November. The singer-songwriter Nick Cave had made a new album and a photo was needed for the cover. Cave had specifically wanted a studio shoot, but Anton Corbijn took him outdoors. A very short series of photos yielded the desired cover shot, and also this intense portrait: dark and raw. We see a singer who indeed is known for his emotional renditions of themes such as love, violence, death and faith, but here he is frowning awfully intensely, and not only that, looking away – which is an unusual pose for a portrait in itself. But Corbijn had sensed the situation correctly, because the album in question – The Boatman’s Call – was all about the painful separation between Cave and his girlfriend, the singer PJ Harvey. Cave’s characteristic face, sculpted by the photo­grapher with light and darkness, radiates resistance.

The averted gaze is that of a person who doesn’t want to acknowledge something.

Anton Corbijn not only worked with the likes of U2, Rolling Stones, Bryan Ferry, Tom Waits, Björk, Nirvana or Bruce Springsteen but also portrayed artists from other disci­plines, such as Gerard Richter, Marlene Dumas, Allen Ginsberg and Robert De Niro. What makes his photos so special is that they often have a monumental quality but are not at all detached. He lets us admire the artists for their talents and see them as sympathetic because of their human nature. His portraits are highly narrative, sometimes even reminiscent of film stills. From that perspective, the fact that he meanwhile has become a beloved and appre­ ciated maker of feature films was perhaps to be expected. FG

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97 Kimani, 2019 Gilleam Trapenberg

The sharp-edged shadow on the boy’s face shows just how bright the light is. Not for nothing is he holding his hands above his eyes, which we can hardly see through the darkness. The photo is from the series This Surely Must be Paradise that Gilleam Trapenberg made on the Caribbean island of Sint-Maarten. The title is taken from a hotel review by an American tourist. For tens of thousands of tourists, Sint-Maarten and many other islands in the Caribbean are indeed a paradise; but as a person born and raised in Curaçao, Trapenberg sees something completely different, and that is what he photographs: a community that has become totally dependent on the arrival of rich Westerners and is therefore very vulnerable – certainly in these days of corona.

The series includes scenes from everyday life, portraits of the locals and photos of places that are right behind the curtains of the polished paradise. He calls it a ‘social landscape’, revealing what usually goes unseen or unnoticed. The lad in the photo is a schoolboy, recognisable by his uniform. He could symbolise the future of the Caribbean islands. His portrait makes us think about what is and isn’t seen, about who is in the shadow and who is in the light. FG

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98 Umi, Schoonhoven, 2020 Meryem Slimani

A classical theme in art history is the artist and his model.

The key question there is: In what way does the relation­ ship between these two people affect the work of art?

With this work, however, the relationship is decidedly not classical, as it is between a mother and a daughter.

Creative director Meryem Slimani fairly regularly dresses up her mother, Najate, in a different outfit, photographs her in a different location or different setting and places the results on her Instagram account. This ‘online fashion show’ gives a cheerful impression, as the model is obviously having a lot of fun and it is bursting with creativity. The mixing of streetwear, vintage and traditional costumes is both playful and fashion-conscious, while the colour photography is rock solid. Meryem shares her thoughts with the viewer in short texts or includes a personal story along with the photo.

However, there is more going on in this ‘series’, because the two women also implicitly address the theme of identity: the daughter looks at the mother in a reversed playing of roles. Whereas the mother dressed the daughter when she was a child, the opposite is now happening. Who is shaping whom? At the same time, this story is an ode to a woman with a history of migration, who has had to overcome many obstacles in her life. Could there be any finer example of how technology has further democratised photography?

Or how social media offers each of us the possibility of honouring our own mother on the world stage? FG

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Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography The almost 100 photographs in this book comprise a Gallery of Honour. Each is more than special in its own way in terms of artistic and social qualities, while as a whole they tell the story of 180 years of photography from the Netherlands.

The Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography is an ode to photography from the Netherlands and to the many photographers whose innovative vision has made this medium what it is today. Their photographs tell as many stories and show as many perspectives as there are entries in this book – from the daguerreotypes of the 19th century to the contemporary works of Rineke Dijkstra and Dustin Thierry.

One place in this Gallery of Honour has been left empty, as a symbol of the photograph that was not selected, not noticed, not known or not sufficiently appreciated. In this way, the Gallery of Honour invites you to participate in the conversation on which photographs should be preserved for the future.