Frits Gierstberg (1959) has been the Head Curator of Exhibitions at the Netherlands Photography
Institute since 1993 and he has held the same post at the Netherlands Museum of
Photography since 2003. Over the years he has organized a large number of
international exhibitions, symposia, lectures and debates on photography.
Starting on 1 January 2006, he is also visiting professor of photography at the
Erasmus University in Rotterdam. In ‘Dutch Renaissance’ he points to
a number of distinguishing features of the new photography in the Netherlands.
‘Dutch Renaissance’
by Frits Gierstberg
Photography in the Netherlands is at present
enjoying a period of unprecedented international interest. This ever-growing
attention is to a great extent due to the international successes of
photographers such as Anton Corbijn, Rineke Dijkstra and Inez van Lamsweerde –
people from other countries are becoming curious about what else is going on in
this little country. In addition to them, Hellen van Meene, Céline van Balen
and Bertien van Manen also frequently exhibit their work outside the Netherlands and it
is being bought by important foreign collections. Every year since the end of the
1990s Dutch photography has been a striking presence at the prestigious Paris
Photo Photography Fair.
Photography in the Netherlands has indeed taken huge strides over the past fifteen
years, even if this has been in such various directions that one can hardly sum
it up under a single heading. Hans Aarsman’s Hollandse taferelen (Dutch
scenes) of 1989, Rineke Dijkstra’s beach portraits of 1992 and Inez van
Lamsweerde’s Final
Fantasies and Thank You Thighmaster series of 1993 can be thought of as
being the three 'milestones’ in the evolution of Dutch photography at the
beginning of the 1990s. Looking back, one could say that these artists have
created the space for what is now called the 'Dutch Renaissance' in
photography.
The younger generation
The international success of Dutch photography is having a stimulating effect
on the autonomous (or artistic) photography of the younger generation of
photographers. What strikes one with this generation
is that one cannot speak of any specific school or trend. Also noticeable is
the virtually complete absence of any classical special field of photography –
for their very varied clients, many young photographers make portraits, fashion
photos, shots of landscapes, architectural photography or the occasional
reportage and they have no problem mixing it in exhibitions and publications
with both their 'autonomous' or 'free ' artistic work, or even with their own
private photos. In comparison with other countries, this is a very well
developed phenomenon in the Netherlands. The production by the younger generation of
many handsome books, self-published or otherwise, continues a long and
distinguished Dutch tradition of photo books.
Classical genres
It goes without saying that there are still photographers in the Netherlands who make a
particular field their speciality. Landscapes and portraits remain important
‘specialist’ genres in contemporary Dutch photography. The concern with the
landscape issues from an increasing awareness of the discrepancy between the
traditional, collectively cherished image of the Dutch landscape and the
reality of a country and countryside that are subject to rapid change. Critical
documentary traditions are continued, with an injection from new, highly
individual viewpoints. Other Dutch photographers approach the landscape on the
basis of the fact that the genre is now firmly rooted in artistic photography.
New ways have also been developed of presenting the landscape – with stereo
photos, for instance, or with cameras hung from kites. Others again play with
the clichés and traditions of the genre.
Commitment
Immediate involvement in current social and/or political questions in Dutch
photography would seem to have retreated to the background. Even so, there
remains a great deal of concern with the fate of the individual. Many
contemporary photographers in the Netherlands who are concerned with portrait
photography are thus also interested in the condition
humaine and less in the more traditional approach to the portrait photo,
focused as it is on revealing the personality of the subject.
Photography, new
media and visual culture
More and more, Dutch photographers are experimenting with different media or
‘new media’. This interest that crosses the borders of the traditional genres
has for some years also extended to the medium of (digital) video, presented in
'installations' in museums and other, similar contexts. Dutch artists have a
good reputation in the experimental field of the ‘new media’ in which for
instance interactivity plays a major role. There is also an expanding group
that is deeply involved in what we have come to call visual culture: the
ubiquitous, ever-increasing stream of images that surrounds and inundates us
every day via the visual media. A number of photographers around the magazine Useful Photography are concerned with
the everyday photography of amateurs and the ‘functional photography’ one finds
in catalogues, cookery books, instruction manuals and publicity brochures. This
initiative is typical of the wide, almost all-embracing interest in the domain
of the visual that Dutch artists are displaying at the present juncture.
January 2006
Regularly a specialist in
the field of photography is invited by Photography in the Netherlands to
focus on developments in photography in this country from a personal viewpoint.
In May 2006 you will be able to read here a contribution by Loes van Harrevelt.
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