Exclusive art project by photographer Erwin Olaf and choreographer Hans van Manen offering a unique view on dance and photography

The grand master of Dutch dance, Hans van Manen, celebrates his 90th birthday this year. That has given rise to international celebrations by leading ballet companies with the Hans van Manen festival from 8 to 29 June 2022, the exclusive publication Dance in Close-Up and the exhibition of the same name in Galerie Ron Mandos in Amsterdam from 19 June to 17 July 2022.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Hans van Manen was not only one of the world’s leading choreographers, but also an internationally acclaimed photographer. It was during this period that the then very young photographer Erwin Olaf met the famed artist, who immediately took him under his wing and introduced him to the world of the visual arts and studio photography.

This book celebrates their 40 years of friendship, with a photo series in which Van Manen directs moments from his choreographic career, recorded with the utmost precision by Erwin Olaf.

With text contributions from the authors Nina Siegal and Michael James Gardner.

About the Author:

Born in 1959 in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Erwin Olaf is an internationally exhibiting artist whose diverse practice centres around society’s marginalised individuals, including women, people of colour, and the LGBTQ+ community. A bold and sometimes controversial approach has earned the artist a number of prestigious collaborations, from Vogue and Louis Vuitton, to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. He served as the official portrait artist for the Dutch royal family in 2017, and designed the national side of the euro coins for King Willem-Alexander in 2013. He has been awarded the Netherlands’ prestigious Johannes Vermeer Award, as well as Photographer of the Year at the International Color Awards, and Kunstbeeld magazine’s Dutch Artist of the Year. Erwin Olaf has exhibited worldwide, including Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Málaga, Spain; Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo, Brazil; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile.

Photographer of excellence, and among the most appreciated in the contemporary art scene, the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf (1959) is to be considered one of the greatest interpreters of modern portrait photography: he is known all over the world for a photographic style dominated by mysterious and contemplative atmospheres, for his mise en scène and theatrical compositions.

In his shots Olaf weaves complex and dramatic narratives. His works are striking in their strangeness, their will to provoke, their sense of solitude and restlessness: they catch glimpses of truth, which reveal the imperfection and the fictitious nature of an apparently perfect world.

This rich catalogue represents a journey through the artist's entire production, offering a complete overview of his work: from the beginning with Chessmen, the series that made him internationally famous, awarded at the Young European Photographer competition in 1988, up to the recent Palm Springs project (2018). The volume includes a critical text by Walter Guadagnini and a conversation with the artist.

About the Authors:

Erwin Olaf (born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, 1959) is a Dutch photographer known for his highly stylized, daring, and often provocative work addressing social issues and taboos. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Johannes Vermeer Award (2011), a Lucie Award (2008), and Photographer of the Year in the International Color Awards (2006). Among other accolades, Olaf received the commission to design the new national side of the Dutch Euro, launched in 2013. In 2008 and 2014 Aperture published volumes one and two of Olaf’s self-titled monographs.

Mattie Boom is curator of photography at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, specializing in international nineteenth- and twentieth-century photography. She is cofounder of the Nederlands Fotogenootschap.

Francis Hodgson is professor in the culture of photography at the University of Brighton, UK, and cofounder of the Prix Pictet. He was previously the photography critic of the Financial Times and head of the photographs department at Sotheby’s.

W. M. Hunt is a longtime photography collector and former art dealer who represented Erwin Olaf in the United States for many years. He is also a writer and teacher based in New York.

Laura Stamps is curator of modern and contemporary art at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague. She is an art history graduate of the University of Amsterdam and, amongst others, a member of the Work Field Commission at the Master Artistic Research program, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

Wim van Sinderen is a founding member and senior curator of the Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Hague, as well as keeper of the photography collection of Gemeente-museum Den Haag. He is, amongst others, guest curator for the Rencontres d’Arles and nominator for the Prix Pictet.

For his photographs and films, the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf creates a world that has been staged down to its smallest detail. It seems very similar to ours, but its artificiality give it an enigmatic sense. Still, with their visuals borrowed from the film and advertising industries, the works are only flawlessly striking on the surface; in fact, they deal with questions of democracy, equality, or self-determination. Marking Olaf’s first comprehensive solo exhibition in Germany, the companion publication deals with essential aspects of Olaf’s art and offers an attractive survey of his multifaceted oeuvre from the past forty years. Olaf’s most recent works, some of which were created especially for the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Munich, will also be shown.

About the Author:

Erwin Olaf (*1959) studied journalism. He began his career as a photographer for magazines and journals, often with a socio-political background. In addition to commercial work, he produced a comprehensive body of artistic work from the 1980s onward. With his idiosyncratic style, Olaf quickly attracted international attention. His works are shown in exhibitions worldwide.

Erwin Olaf’s approach to storytelling is uniquely evocative and enticingly ambiguous. According to critic Francis Hodgson, Olaf’s images “lead us to a Stimmung (a sense of atmo­sphere) which is broad enough to repay many second readings of the pictures and so keep us viewers interested.”

In this presentation of his most recent work, Olaf expands on his established style of highly polished and stylized color studio images to include a series drawn from his sculptural video installation, Keyhole; a group of black-and-white images he has exhibited as carbon prints; and photographs created on location in Berlin — a departure from the constructed mise-en-scènes of earlier work produced in his Amsterdam studio.

Erwin Olaf: Volume II showcases the artist at the height of his powers as an artisan of atmosphere and a craftsman who uses high polish to both perverse and seductive effect.

About the Author:

Erwin Olaf (born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, 1959) is a Dutch photographer known for his highly stylized, daring, and often provocative work addressing social issues and taboos. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Johannes Vermeer Award (2011), a Lucie Award (2008), and Photographer of the Year in the International Color Awards (2006). His work is shown in museums and galleries around the world. Olaf also received a commission to design the new national side of the Dutch Euro, launched in 2013.

Francis Hodgson (essay), former head of the photographs department at Sotheby’s, is profes­sor in the Culture of Photography at the University of Brighton, England. He is also the pho­tography critic of the Financial Times. 

In honor of Erwin Olaf’s sixtieth birthday, Erwin Olaf: I Am presents the first comprehensive survey of his work, bringing together his earliest images in black and white with his now iconic color work, including selections from his most recent and heretofore unpublished series shot in Shanghai. This chronological presentation traces the evolution of the artist from cheeky provocateur to royal portraitist, as well as the refinement of his unique vision and stylistic panache over the last four decades.

The book is published to accompany the largest retrospective of Olaf’s work to date, a multiple-venue show that will encompass installations at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Gemeentemuseum Den Haag; and Fotomuseum Den Haag. Launching in February 2019, the show will subsequently travel to other venues in Europe, Shanghai, and the United States.

About the Authors:

Erwin Olaf (born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, 1959) is a Dutch photographer known for his highly stylized, daring, and often provocative work addressing social issues and taboos. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Johannes Vermeer Award (2011), a Lucie Award (2008), and Photographer of the Year in the International Color Awards (2006). Among other accolades, Olaf received the commission to design the new national side of the Dutch Euro, launched in 2013. In 2008 and 2014 Aperture published volumes one and two of Olaf’s self-titled monographs.

Mattie Boom is curator of photography at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, specializing in international nineteenth- and twentieth-century photography. She is cofounder of the Nederlands Fotogenootschap.

Francis Hodgson is professor in the culture of photography at the University of Brighton, UK, and cofounder of the Prix Pictet. He was previously the photography critic of the Financial Times and head of the photographs department at Sotheby’s.

W. M. Hunt is a longtime photography collector and former art dealer who represented Erwin Olaf in the United States for many years. He is also a writer and teacher based in New York.

Laura Stamps is curator of modern and contemporary art at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague. She is an art history graduate of the University of Amsterdam and, amongst others, a member of the Work Field Commission at the Master Artistic Research program, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

Wim van Sinderen is a founding member and senior curator of the Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Hague, as well as keeper of the photography collection of Gemeente-museum Den Haag. He is, amongst others, guest curator for the Rencontres d’Arles and nominator for the Prix Pictet.

Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf's highly stylized mode of image-making offers a blend of mid-century modern and noir aesthetics, seen through a contemporary, fashion-inflected lens. In this enticing volume — the first time these three bodies of work have been presented as a whole — Olaf seduces the viewer via a mannered, restrained palette replete with faded avocado greens, golden-hued oranges, and subtle lilacs.

Each richly colored and sleekly composed image offers a sly reinterpretation of Norman Rockwell-like iconography and characters, manifesting a nostalgia that both burlesques and wryly celebrates America of the 1950s and '60s. As a whole, the material investigates what critic Jonathan Turner defines as "Olaf's recent fascination with the visual representation of such emotions as loss, loneliness, and quiet despair.... [He] plays games with the idea of cold reality versus cruel artifice, capturing that precise moment when innocence, hope, and joy are lost."

This project was made possible, in part, by generous support from the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam; Hasted Hunt Gallery, New York; and the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York.

About the Author:

Erwin Olaf (born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, 1959) graduated from the Utrecht School for Journalism, in 1980, with a degree in newspaper journalism and photojournalism. Olaf has earned several Silver Lions for his commercial work, which has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, London Sunday Times, and Vanity Fair. He is represented by Flatland Gallery, Utrecht/Paris and Hasted Hunt, New York. A  solo exhibition of his work opened at the Fotomuseum, The Hague, in 2008.