Dutch Photobooks Catalog Bauman Rare Books Photography

Open publication - Free publishing - More photography

c a s o o r t h u y s

The “First Task Was To Bear Witness”
140. (OORTHUYS, Cas). Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter [Amsterdam during the ‘Hungerwinter’]. Amsterdam, 1947. Large quarto, original half black cloth, dust jacket. $5200.

First edition, a landmark photobook of “extreme hardship… resilience and resistance” (Parr & Badger), with over 140 black-and-white photogravures, many secretly taken by leading members of the Dutch Underground Camera Group—as Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse and Krun Taconis—ocumenting Holland under the Nazis, in very scarce,unrestored dust jacket.
Published only two years after Holland’s liberation from the Nazis, “this is not simply a book remembering and commemorating Amsterdam’s dreadful winter of 1944-45, but also a political rallying cry for the future… The story told is of extreme hardship—unger, poverty and cold. People stand in food queues or search desperately for firewood, while others lie dead or dying in the streets But Amsterdam also showed resilience and resistance… It was a landmark publication by a group of photographers with both an ethical and an aesthetic attitude.” Leading photojournalists such as Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, Krun Taconis, and others who formed the Underground Camera Group, made these images at great risk, each understanding that Amsterdam’s “first task was to bear witness.” As the journalist Max Nord wrote in the book’s introduction, “Was it not in those times that we dreamed our most beautiful dreams?… While uniformed Germans marched along Amsterdam’s canals, their clipped songs resounding past the overcrowded prisons, we had a clear vision of the most perfect freedom” (Parr & Badger, 196). Text in Dutch. Introductory essay by Max Nord. With extremely scarce photographic dust jacket printed on verso, typical of such postwar publications. Book fine; some chipping to spine ends, closed tears along spine seam, minor tape repair to verso of very good, unrestored dust jacket. Rare.

j o a n v a n d e r k e u k e n

“Capturing That Moment When Childhood Ends”

178. VAN DER KEUKEN, Joan. Wij zijn 17 [We are 17]. Bussum, 1955. Slim octavo, original stiff photographic wrappers. $2500.

First edition, the first photobook by renowned photographer and filmmaker Van der Keuken, with 30 black-and-white “innovative” halftones of Dutch youth about to “take a deep breath and step out into the world” (Parr & Badger).

“In 1955, the 17-year-old Joan van der Keuken [1938-2001] caused a stir in Dutch publishing with his book Wij zijn 17 (We Are 17)… Innovative… in its treatment of a section of society… the 30 pictures in Wij zijn 17 are tellingly simple. Students lounge around in their rooms, doing nothing very much, as if waiting for their adult lives to begin. The mood is uncertain, capturing that moment when childhood ends and youth must take a deep breath and step out into the world… Van der Keuken’s foray into the new form of the ‘photonovel’… became a model for other books examining the same phenomenon” (Parr & Badger II:244). Van der Keuken went on to become “arguably Europe’s most important documentary filmmaker” (New York Times). Scarce first edition; text in Dutch. Images quite fresh; lightest edge-wear to fragile photographic wrappers. A key European photobook, near-fine.

v a n d e r e l s k e n

“Jazz Visually Echoes The Music Itself”

177. VAN DER ELSKEN, Ed. Jazz. Amsterdam, 1959. Small square octavo, original laminated photographic boards. $2200.

First edition, Dutch issue, a “gem of a book” (Parr & Badger), with over 100 rich, velvety photogravures of jazz greats, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan.

“The 1950s constituted a golden age for jazz music. The decade was also renowned for classic small-camera photography, much of it as rough and ready as the best experimental jazz. The two art forms combine to perfection in Ed van der Elsken’s gem of a book, Jazz. Jazz is an elusive art form, and there would seem to be two aspects to pinning it down in a photobook: the form of the photographs and the form of the book.Van der Elsken’s assiduous attention to both makes this modest volume probably the most successful of the numerous attempts to do so… Jazz visually echoes the music itself” (Parr & Badger I:246). Roth, 156. Text in Dutch. First edition, Dutch issue, published same year in German as Foto-Jazz; both printed in Holland, no priority established. Open Book, 184. Owner signature on title page. Images clean and fresh, mild rubbing to bright boards, light tape repair to spine of near-fine book.

h a n s a a r s m a n 

“The Sheer Beauty Of The Light” 

2. AARSMAN, Hans. Hollandse Taferelen [Dutch Tableaux]. Amsterdam, 1989. Oblong quarto, original gray cloth, mounted cover photographic plate, dust jacket. $1800. 

First edition of Aarsman’s acclaimed photobook, with 36 color and six black-and-white plates that affirm his unique and “finely tuned picture-making sensibilities” (Parr & Badger).

“Dutch photographer Hans Aarsman has frequently expressed a distaste for ‘arty’ photographs, while acknowledging that the camera has an inherent propensity for beautifying the most mundane object or scene.” In Hollandse Taferelen, Aarsman’s “finely tuned picture-making sensibilities… [create] an expose of the forces shaping the Dutch environment—reeping industrialization, the motor vehicle—nd an homage to the 17th-century landscape painters, who invented the genre of modern landscape painting. Aarsman replaces the bucolic optimism of the paintings with a sardonic pessimism, keeping the irony tuned up and any other signs of self-expression toned down. Sometimes, however—robably to his annoyance—e cannot help but succumb to the sheer beauty of the light” (Parr & Badger II:69). Text in Dutch. First edition, issued in cloth only. A fine copy.

r i n e k e d i j k s t r a

“A Major New Voice In Portraiture” 

57. DIJKSTRA, Rineke. Portraits. Munchen and New York, 2004. Large quarto, original gray paper-covered boards, dust jacket, slipcase. WITH: Chromatic print signed. No place, June 29, 2004. Print measures 7 by 9-1/2 inches, written in penciled hand on verso, matted within cloth portfolio, entire piece measures 10 by 13 inches. $2800.

Limited “Collector’s Edition” of the first retrospective to honor internationally acclaimed Dutch photographer Dijkstra, number 90 of only 100 copies handnumbered in pencil by the photographer on limitation slip affixed to front free endpaper and featuring 70 four-color plates, set together in original slipcase with a matted chromatic print, enclosed in portfolio, titled and numbered in penciled hand on the verso, “Chlopy, Poland, July 29, 1995, 90/100” and signed in same penciled hand, “Rineke Dykstra, June 29, 2005.”

“When they first appeared in the 1990s, the portraits by the Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra caused more of a stir than any comparable imagery since Diane Arbus”(Parr & Badger I:277). In this beautifully produced photobook, the acclaimed photographer portrays “young people in moments of vulnerability: young women who have just given birth, standing naked before the lens, child in arms; exhausted   matadors postfight” and her famed portraits of adolescents on the beach. Text in German and English. A fine copy.