Ed van der Elsken

Curator: Hripsimé Visser

Ed van der Elsken (Amsterdam, 1925–Edam, 1990) is a unique figure in Dutch photography and documentary cinema. His expressive, socially committed, experimental work captures the mood of the four decades following the Second World War. His personality shows through in his numerous self-portraits and in his relationship to his subjects. A street photographer, he worked in different cities around the world—Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo—searching for what he called “his” people, authentic people who are often on the margins of society. The modernity of his images and their quasi cinematic quality cohered with the non-conformist lifestyles of the people whose everyday lives he shared. He sought an aesthetic form and visual authenticity that were devoid of artifice, a beauty that was sometimes openly sensual, at times even erotic.

Books, films and slide shows form the core of his oeuvre. In his first book, Love on the Left Bank (1956), the young photographer broke with the conventions of documentary photography of the period. His approach was direct, his images alive and sometimes violent. The book combines reality and fiction in an almost cinematic way. Numerous publications would follow, often produced in collaboration with the great Dutch graphic designers of the time. Right from the start of his career, in the 1950s, he made films and documentaries that were close to the Nouvelle Vague in style and cinéma-vérité in method. His subjects were always linked to his own life, as demonstrated by his first and last features: Welcome to Life, Dear Little One (1963), a portrait of his neighborhood and the life of his family, and Bye (1990), a major work in which he follows the evolution of his own disease.

This retrospective, the most extensive ever presented in Spain, shows the multiple facets of an artist who experimented with various practices. It features a large selection of some of his most iconic photographs, as well as his books, and excerpts from his films and slide shows created from his numerous color photographs, particularly Tokyo Symphony. In addition to his contact sheets, sketches and dummies for some of his works, personal documents, letters and notes shed new light on his working methods and personality.

The catalogue presents a superb overview of Ed van der Elsken’s photographs, films and books. Each of the essays considers a different aspect of his work. Hripsimé Visser explores how he worked, revealing his obsession with technique and composition. David Campany shows how van der Elsken’s photographs, books and films cross boundaries between genres and media. Susan Aasman investigates his experimental television documentaries, and Colin van Heezik analyses our fascination with van der Elsken’s photographs in the age of the selfie. Nan Goldin, Valerie Jouve and Paulien Oltheten each present a tribute to his work.

Exhibition organised by Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in collaboration with Jeu de Paume and Fundación MAPFRE.