Eduard van der Elsken (10 March 1925 – 28 December 1990) was a Dutch photographer and filmmaker.
His imagery provides quotidian, intimate and autobiographic perspectives on the European zeitgeist"A good deal has been said about [Documenta X's] 'over-representation' of the 1960s and 1970s, calling it nostalgic and anachronistic radicalism. Some, however, rejoiced in its unflinching rejection of the art and culture that had become dominant as globalization intensified ... dX reached back to 1950 or even earlier, tracing and juxtaposing genealogies and individual interventions in photography, performance, installation, and videos, often cries-crossing genre boundaries. Interesting things happen to the work when a celebrated documentary photographer of the American Depression of the 1930s, Walker Evans, is seen in the same show as a contemporary Canadian photographer, Jeff Wall, who works with large, digitally constructed photographic narratives. The variety of work on display was striking: Helen Levitt, Aldo van Eyck, Maria Lassnig, Lygia Clark, Richard Hamilton, Marcel Broodthaers, Ed van der Elsken, Nancy Spero, Öyvind Fahlström, Garry Winogrand, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Robert Adams, Hélio Oiticica, James Coleman, Gordon Matta-Clark, Susanne Lafont, William Kentridge, Martin Walde, and many more." Miyoshi, M. 'Radical Art at Documenta X', in New Left Review I/228, March–April 1998. London: Verso. spanning the period of the Second World War into the 1970s in the realms of love, sex, art, music (particularly jazz), and alternative culture. He described his camera as 'infatuated', and said: "I'm not a journalist, an objective reporter, I'm a man with likes and dislikes".Aletti, Vince. Cafe noir (biography). [Article. Biography] Artforum International. v. 38 no7, Mar. 2000, pp. 98-103, 105-7. His style is subjective and emphasises the seer over the seen; a photographic equivalent of first-person speech.
Early life Ed van der Elsken was born on 10 March 1925 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 1937, wanting to become a sculptor, he learned stone-cutting at Amsterdam's Van Tetterode Steenhouwerij. After completing preliminary studies at the Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs, the predecessor of the Rietveld Academy (dir. Mart Stam), he enrolled (in 1944) in the professional sculpture program, which he abandoned to escape Nazi forced labour. That year, after the Battle of Arnhem he was stationed in a mine-disposal unit where he was first shown Picture Post by British soldiers. Later, in 1947, he discovered American sensationalist photographer Weegee's Naked City. These encounters inspired his interest in photography and that year he took work in photo sales and attempted a correspondence course with the Fotovakschool in Den Haag, failing the final examination. He subsequently gained membership of the GKfThe GKf is a photographers association that was founded in 1945 by Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, Eva Besnyö and . Other prominent photographers soon joined, all of whom played an important role in the resistance movement during the war. What united these photographers was not only their artistic vision, but a mutual social engagement (photographer's section of the Dutch federation of practitioners of the applied arts).
Paris At the suggestion of Dutch photographer Emmy Andriesse (1914–1953) he moved in 1950 to Paris.Koetzle, Hans-Michael & Adam, Hans-Christian, 1948- & Haus der Photographie (host institution.) (2011). Eyes on Paris: Paris im Fotobuch, 1890 bis heute. München Hirmer Hamburg Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg He was employed in the darkrooms of the Magnum photography agency, printing for Henri Cartier-Bresson (who was impressed with his street photography), Robert Capa and Ernst Haas. There he met (and in 1954 married) fellow photographer Ata KandóAta Kando (born Budapest, 1913), the daughter of Hungarian parents, writer Margit G. Beke and Professor Imre Görög. She calls herself 'Ata' from her first name Etelka, and Kando is the name of her first husband, the painter Gyula Kando, with whom she left for Paris in 1932. Her commercial photographic career began as an assistant at Magnum immediately after the War. Later she photographed for Paris fashion houses and continued to do so after accompanying Van der Elsken to the Netherlands. (b. 1913 Budapest, Hungary), twelve years his senior, living with her three children among the 'ruffians' and bohemians"In Paris, this kind of urban roaming was characteristic of Left Bank bohemianism, where the art of drifting was a favorite way of cultivating that feeling of being 'apart together' that Huizinga described as characteristic of play. A vivid record of this time and place is Ed van der Elsken's book of photographs, which recorded some of the favorite haunts of the lettrists". Andreotti, Libero. "Play-Tactics of the "Internationale Situationniste". October, Vol. 9 (Winter, 2000), pp. 36-58: The MIT Press of Paris from 1950 to 1954.
Ata was a principled documentarianKandó, Ata; Sándor, Anna; Interview with Ata Kandó in Múlt és Jövő (Past and Future) Journal Issue 2, 2003, pages 72-75. Budapest: Past and Future Publishing House (Múlt és Jövő) whose pictures taken in the forests of the Amazon among the Piraoa and Yekuana tribes are her best known,see her illustrations in Soundmaking, magic and personality by Jacqueline van Ommeren. (English translation of Bevrijd de dommen van hun domheid). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1979. but her more poetic leanings, exemplified in her Droom in het Woud (Dream in the Wood, photographed 1954 in Switzerland and Austria, published 1957) must also have been an influence on Van der Elsken and his decision to move from newspaper reportage to aim to become a magazine photojournalist. Consequently, much of his work documented his own energetic and eccentric life experience"European[s]...like Ed van der Elsken and Christer Strömholm, who became not only observers of, but also participants in, the worlds they depicted." Charrier, P. (2010). The Making of a Hunter: Moriyama Daidō 1966–1972. History of Photography, 34(3), 268-290. subjectively, presaging the work of Larry Clark, Nan Goldin or Wolfgang Tillmans.Dziewior, Yilmaz. Yilmaz Dziewior talks with Annelie Lutgens (interview). Artforum International. v. 38 no 7, Mar. 2000, p. 104. An interview with Annelie Lutgens, curator of a comprehensive survey of the work of photographer Ed van der Elsken at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany, from March 2000. Thus his adopted family and their lives became the subjects of his photographs along with the people he met, during this Paris period, including Edward SteichenSteichen appears in a photo Van der Elsken photo took in a Paris cafe in 1953 in Ed van der Elsken: Parijs Foto's—1950–1954. Edited with text by Anthon Beeke. Amsterdam, Bert Bakker, 1981."After leaving Sweden, Steichen journeyed to Amsterdam. Following the success of the Stockholm meeting, similar gatherings were held in The Hague and in Amsterdam. Eva Besnyo (1910-2003), a Dutch photographer of Hungarian birth attended the meeting in Amsterdam. She remembers a large assembly at the studio of photographer Paul Huf (1924-2002). The meeting used the 'Stockholm protocol'; that is, photographers brought images, Steichen explained his plans for an exhibition on mankind and looked at photographs. Besides Besnyo, photographers present included Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, Carl Blazer, Maria Austria, Ed van der Elsken, Henk Jonker and several others. Besnyo claims that most photographers did not dare bring too many of their photographs. However, photographer Ed van der Elsken (1925- 1990), whom she identified as the best of them all, brought practically his entire oeuvre. Steichen spent a large part of the evening looking at Van der Elsken's images, encouraging and advising the young photographer in his work. Elsken went on to enjoy a successful career; publishing several books of his work. Six Dutch photographers were included in The Family of Man exhibition, all of whom had attended the meeting at Paul Huf's studio." from Kristen Gresh (2005) The European roots of The Family of Man, History of Photography, 29:4, 331-343, DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2005.10442815 who used eighteen of the photographer's Saint-Germain-des-Prés images in a survey show (1953) Postwar European Photography and another in "The Family of Man". The latter photograph featured in the 'adult play' section of the show, and is a chiaroscuro, tight frame cropping fragments of the faces of two women and a man who eyes others at an opening or event over his cigarette, and a male hand (possibly v. d. Elsken's) thrusting a wine glass into the foreground. It is likely his introduction to Steichen (who appears in the photographer's Parijs! : 1950-1954) was via Robert Frank who scouted European exhibitors for the MoMA show.Kroes, R. Photographic Memories: Private Pictures, Public Images, and American History (2007) UPNE. , p.137. "Frank, who helped Steichen get in touch with European photographers in preparation for the exhibition, may have known Van der Elsken and introduced him."
Another encounter was with Vali Myers (1930–2003) who became the haunting kohl-eyed heroine of his roman à clef photo-novelGierstberg, F. and Suermondt, R. (2012) The Dutch Photobook: A Thematic Selection from 1945 Onwards. Distributed Art Pub Incorporated, 2012. Een liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1956; its English-language version was titled Love on the left bank).
Love on the Left Bank
"Een liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint-Germain-des-Prés" ('Love on the left bank')Schwabsky, Barry. Ed van der Elsken. The Photographers' Gallery, London. [Article. Exhibition] On Paper. v. 6 no2, Nov./Dec. 2001, p. 86.The book of 101 books: Seminal photographic books of the 20th century. Andrew Roth (editor); essays by Richard Benson ... [et al.]; catalogue by Vince Aletti, David Levi Strauss. New York: Roth Horowitz, 2001. published in 1956, and designed by Dutch graphic designer, sculptor and typographer Jurriaan Schrofer (1926–1990), is recognised as a particular contribution to the photobook; the beeldroman (photonovel), an essentially self-reflexive European genre."The story is not exactly sophisticated, and van der Elsken's pictures are not such pure examples of stream-of-consciousness as some of his other work, but the book remains an important and influential early example of a genre that has become increasingly popular in the late twentieth century—the diaristic mode."
Van der Elsken initially put together a dummy of his text and images himself, but could not attract the interest of a publishing house. However, he succeeded with the renowned British magazine Picture Post, which devoted a four-part series in 1954 to the imagery entitled Why did Roberto leave Paris?. The editors felt it necessary to inform the reader that these were pictures not from a movie, but a "real-life story about people who do exist".