A cyclist cheekily sticking out her tongue, tough youths on Amsterdam's Nieuwendijk, young women in miniskirts. From The Netherlands to Cuba and Japan, Ed van der Elsken chased the same unfiltered energy. Different streets, a different time - and yet you recognise it.
He is one of the most beloved Dutch photographers of the twentieth century. But how did his pictures come about? What did he see that others missed? And what did he set aside, sometimes for years, before he was satisfied?
INTO HIS STUDIO
The exhibition
Ed van der Elsken. Up Close
takes you into his studio. Since 2019, the Rijksmuseum and the Nederlands Fotomuseum have looked after his personal archive together, and for the first time the material has been examined in full.
Alongside his best-known photographs, you'll see his handwritten notes, contact sheets covered in red marks, darkroom experiments and newly discovered book dummies.
SEARCHING, REFINING, STARTING OVER
Across nine galleries you follow him from his first reportages in the early 1950s to the making of his last photo book in the late 1980s. You see him searching, refining, starting over. Travelling to Cuba and Japan with the same curious gaze as in Amsterdam. Mulling over books that sometimes came into being, and sometimes never did.
In film fragments you hear him speak in his own words. Free-spirited, headstrong, and at times unsure.
A THOUSAND ATTEMPTS
What remains is the picture of a maker who was never quite done. Someone who didn't just record what was happening, but kept searching for a form that matched what he felt. He changed Dutch photography for good. Not through one perfect picture, but through a thousand attempts.
Book
In collaboration with
nai010 publishers, the book
Ed van der Elsken. Up Close
, written by Hinde Haest, curator of Photography at the Rijksmuseum, will be published to accompany the exhibition. The book is available in both Dutch and English.
The publication was made possible in part through the support of Anneke Hilhorst, Jan de Bont and Trish de Bont / the Rijksmuseum Fonds, the Jaap Harten Fonds, and the
Annet Gelink Gallery.
Thanks to
The exhibition
Ed van der Elsken. Up Close
is made possible in part by Anneke Hilhorst, the Familie Krouwels Fonds, het Conrad Whelan 42 Fund, and Jan and Trish de Bont through the Rijksmuseum Fonds.