Express Yourself: Rijksmuseum photo exhibition focuses on youth culture
Publication date: 04 January 2024 - 15:07
This spring the Rijksmuseum is devoting a photography exhibition to youth culture, featuring work by Gerard Wessel and André Bogaerts. Both photographers focused on young people in the 1981 to 2012 period, each from a very different perspective. While Wessel’s images celebrate nightlife and self-expression, Bogaerts’ contemplative and intimate portraits capture teens on the cusp of adulthood. The exhibition comprises some 40 photographs and runs from 16 February to 9 June 2024 in the Rijksmuseum’s photography gallery.
Popular subject
For a long time in history it was common for young people to dress like adults. That all changed in the 1950s when youths chose completely different styles to break with adult conventions. They were a striking presence on city streets, and soon became a popular subject for photographers. One of the first photographers in the Netherlands to focus frequently on young people was Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990). Many others followed him in capturing images of the youth of their time.
Going out and going to school
In recent years the Rijksmuseum has purchased and received multiple works by Gerard Wessel (b. 1960) and André Bogaerts (1955-2022), two photographers whose work centres on the lived experience of young people. From 1985 onwards Wessel mainly worked in the nightlife scene, whereas Bogaerts began in the early 1980s to take portraits of students at the secondary school where he taught: the Amsterdam school for Individual Continuing Arts Education, or IVKO. Each series focuses on a different group of young people.
Gerard Wessel
Gerard Wessel describes himself as a street photographer, but interprets the term broadly. He photographed ‘The red light district and the city nomads,’ he explains, ‘the vagrants, the city squares, Vondelpark, Waterlooplein, youth culture in general, and the outrageous nightlife scene.’ Most of Wessel’s photographs in Express Yourself were shot in Amsterdam, within a circle that extended less than thousand metres from his home. Wessel worked for many years for Nieuwe Revu, a weekly magazine that was a leading showcase for photography. Many of his photographs of young people appeared in the magazine. His aim as a photographer has always been to explore his fascination for the human beings living around him.
André Bogaerts
André Bogaerts took a very different photographic path from Gerard Wessel by shooting portraits of young people at an Amsterdam secondary school. Bogaerts was himself still a student at the Amsterdam art school the Rietveld Academie when he started teaching photography at IVKO. In the early 1980s, he made a series of portraits of students at the secondary school. Vrij Nederland magazine published 17 of these images in November 1982. In the accompanying interviews by Odette de Bont, the students in the portraits talk about their clothing styles and preferences. ‘Actually,’ says one of the interviewees, ‘the only time I don’t think clothes are important is when I’m sleeping.’
*The Rijksmuseum is grateful for all the forms of support it receives. Government funding and contributions from the business sector and funding organisations, as well as gifts, bequests and Friends, are all of vital importance to the Rijksmuseum.
The photography collection of the Rijksmuseum has been established with the generous support of partners, and private and institutional benefactors.
Benefactors
Rob en Flora Bogaerts, Amsterdam
Fonds 1975/Rijksmuseum Fonds
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