Ed van der Elsken: Crazy World

Last year, in its Crazy World exhibition, the Rijksmuseum showed a small selection of the largest acquisition the museum has ever made in the field of photography: almost 8,000 photographs by Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990). What drove the museum to acquire so much work by one photographer? And what does this tell us about the working method of the Netherlands' most famous, important and controversial post-war photographer? Hans Rooseboom, curator of photography, explains.