There are photographers who observe the world and those who seem to plunge straight into it. Ed van der Elsken belonged firmly to the second camp. Never coolly detached, rarely neutral, he photographed with appetite: for faces, for attitude, for youth, for cities in motion. That instinct is at the heart of Ed van der Elsken. Up Close, a major Rijksmuseum exhibition. Photographs, contact sheets, notes, letters, book dummies and film fragments from a number of Dutch institutional collections are all part of this show that delivers the artist’s electric images and reveals the working mind behind them.
Van der Elsken has long been celebrated as one of the most influential Dutch photographers of the 20th century, a pioneer of street photography, but what is less known is how constructed, searching and experimental that apparent spontaneity could be. Following the joint acquisition of his complete work archive by the Rijksmuseum and the Nederlands Fotomuseum in 2019, curators have been able to study his process in depth for the first time. The result is a layered portrait of an artist who was forever testing how a photograph, a sequence, a book or a moving image might carry emotional force.
Left: Ed van der Elsken, Edam, c. 1973. Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam.
Right: Ed van der Elsken, Beethovenstraat, Amsterdam, 1967. Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam.
Born in Amsterdam in 1925, he made his name in Paris in the early 1950s, where he worked in Magnum’s darkrooms and moved among the bohemians of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His breakthrough photobook, Love on the Left Bank, brought together documentary instinct and cinematic storytelling in a way that helped redefine what a photobook could be. He left aside objectivity and pursued involvement, friction, seduction, recognition.
His range was wider than many remember. Beyond Amsterdam street scenes and rebellious postwar youth, Van der Elsken travelled extensively, photographing and filming in places including Central Africa, Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico and the United States. Jazz, protest movements, avant-garde art, lovers, drifters and everyday urban theatre all found their way into his work. He also moved fluidly between still and moving image, embracing experimental film techniques and cinéma-vérité approaches that made his voice, literally and stylistically, part of the work. That restlessness is one of the most compelling things about him: he was never simply recording life but constantly trying to invent a form equal to its mess and momentum.
Left: Ed van der Elsken, Riot on Queen’s Day, Damrak, Amsterdam, 30 April 1970. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Middle: Ed van der Elsken, Woman cycling, Amsterdam, 1983. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Right: Ed van der Elsken, Juliette Kandó, Sèvres, 1950-1954. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Ed van der Elsken Up Close appears intent on restoring his volatility: the doubts, revisions, false starts and formal play that sat behind the bravado of the finished image. For those who know only the famous photographs, this could be the most interesting part of all. The exhibition invites us to see him not just as a chronicler of postwar modern life, but as an artist who understood that photography could be raw, intimate, subjective and gloriously unfinished.
Author: Lina Ress
Lead image: Ed van der Elsken, Queens Day, Dam, Amsterdam, 1980. Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam. © Ed van der Elsken estate/Nederlands Fotomuseum.
All image © Ed van der Elsken estate/Nederlands Fotomuseum.
Other unmissable international exhibitions recently reviewed by I-M Inquisitive Minds include Dancing the Revolution, at MCA Chicago; Sylvia Safdie: TERRA at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa; and Pomellato, Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire, at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
Show Comments +