Amsterdam in Stills New Topographics Avant la Lettre J.M. Arsath Ro'is Photography

An Amsterdam civil service worker took more than 10,000 photos of Amsterdam (all available online), but not in the name of art, see Hans Aarsman about J.M. Arsath Ro'is ...

The Sand Photographer from Amsterdam It must have been in the early sixties that J.M. Arsath Ro'is, a photographer for the Amsterdam Municipal Archives, stepped off his moped. Facing him was a construction site. Of the photographers employed by the Municipal Archives, he was the one who had a penchant for areas of the city that did not yet have sidewalks. The sand photographer, he was called. Arsath Ro'is walked across the construction site until he found the right viewpoint. He took a photograph and got ready to get back on his moped. But the moped was no longer there. It had been stolen. Arsath Ro'is bought a new one and resolved never to leave it unattended. From that day on, almost all of his photographs featured a moped in them somewhere. See also 

Cary Markerink City-stills New Topographics in the 70s Photography

The Indonesian photographer J.M. Arsath Ro'is was an employee of the Germeentearchief Amsterdam. From 1959 to 1981 he documented the expansion and changing infrastructure of the city of Amsterdam. The editors of Ohio selected these eighty black and white photographs from among hundreds in Ro'is' personal archive, each showing a different part of the city and the bicycle he rode to get there.