Bint photoBooks on INTernet: Collecting Photographs Choices by Willem Diepraam Photography

A peripatetic photographer, Willem Diepraam began his career as a journalist for the Dutch newsweekly, Vrij Nederland. He has also been an avid collector of photographs, publicist, curator of exhibitions, and organizer of exhibitions of his own work. The latter demonstrates a deep and genuine empathy for the plight of the world's underpriveleged as well as an impeccable eye for form and composition. A committed moralist and an incurable aesthete at the same time (there is no contradiction as far as he is concerned), Willem Diepraam has long been an established name in European journalism and art photography circles but remains virtually unknown in the United States.

The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam has acquired 400 original 20^th century photographic prints from the Diepraam-Kempadoo Collection. Famous photographers like André Kertész, Robert Capa, László Moholy-Nagy, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Weegee, William Klein, Cas Oorthuys and Eva Besnÿo are represented in this collection. This purchase will give the Rijksmuseum’s current collection of 20^th century photography a significant boost.

The broad and varied Diepraam-Kempadoo collection is an important addition to the Rijksmuseum’s current collection of photographs, from the perspectives of both ‘art’ and ‘history’. Some of the finer highlights from photographic art (Eva Watson-Schütze, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy) as well as important series from photo journalism by, for example, Capa, Oorthuys, Andriesse and Cartier-Bresson, which provide an insight into the turbulent history of the 20^th century, make up the Diepraam-Kempadoo Collection.

Examples from the collection include a shot by Kertész of the covered market in Paris - Les Halles - taken in 1927, a view of Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam by the surrealist French photographer Roger Parry taken in 1939 and a modernist composition by László Moholy-Nagy. There are also a few insightful photos to be found, taken by the ‘Camera in Hiding’, illegal work by Dutch photographers in the final year of the Second World War in the Netherlands. Photo journalism is well represented with captivating images taken by Robert Capa (the Chinese-Japanese War, 1938), Werner Bischof (the Korean War, 1952) and Henri Cartier-Bresson (Ghandi). Dutch photography makes its appearance with early work by such photographic artists as Ed van der Elsken, Johan van der Keuken and Eva Besnyö. The collection has been put together with much care and attention to these original, authentic and rare prints from the period.

The Rijksmuseum owns approximately 100,000 photos. Where previously the museum mainly specialised in collecting 19^th century photographs with the aim of illustrating the relationship between the art of printing and drawing, in recent years the museum has sought to build a high quality collection of 20^th century photos. The latter is now even more important since, when the museum reopens, a great deal of attention will be paid to the art and history of the 20^th century. Photography will be an integral part of this. The purchase of the Diepraam-Kempadoo Collection gives the Rijksmuseum’s current collection of 20^th century photography, comprising around 5,000 photos, a significant qualitative boost.

Privately Willem Diepraam is interested (far from the madding crowd) in photographs of : Ilse Bing, Peter Henry Emerson Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, Inge Morath, Marguerite Boux, Samuel Bourne, William B. Post, Wynn Bullock, Auguste Salzmann, Sanne Sannes, Gerard Fieret, William Mullins, Ernst Haas, Lee Friedlander, Elliott Erwitt, Eugene Smith, Andre Kertesz, Bill Brandt ...