Erwin Olaf

The Photography of Erwin Olaf

Born in Hilversum, the Netherlands in July of 1959, Erwin Olaf Springveld is a Dutch photographer known for both his personal and commercial work. He is primarily known for his lush large-format color prints of staged scenes that depict complex and dramatic narratives.

Erwin Olaf studied journalism at the School of Journalism in Utrecht. an important Dutch city with roots back to the eighth-century. He started his photographic career by documenting pre-AIDS gay liberation in Amsterdam’s 1980s nightlife. This work soon led to Olaf’s personal exploration of varied series shot in both black-and-white and color. Assuming the role of both photographer and director, he currently shoots cinematic-styled tableaux whose arrangements and diluted color palettes evoke memories of the early 1960s.

Olaf has been commissioned to photograph advertising campaigns for large international companies including Microsoft, Nokia and Levi’s. His bold approach to photography has led to a number of prestigious collaborations, among which have been Louis Vuitton, Vogue Magazine, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Throughout his forty-year career, Olaf has maintained an activist approach to equality. His diverse series center around the issues of society’s marginalized individuals, including people of color, women and the LBGTQ+ community.

Erwin Olaf designed the national side of the 2013 Euro coins for King Willem-Alexander Koning, which commemorated two-hundred years of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Olaf served in 2017 as the official portrait artist for the Dutch royal family. In 2018, he completed a triptych of photographic and filmic tableaux depicting periods of sudden change in major world cities and their effects. Olaf became a Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands in 2019 after five-hundred works from his oeuvre were added to the collection of the Rijksmuseum. He was 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.

Among the many photographic series produced by Olaf are the 2005 “Hope, Grief, Rain” which centers on the suspended moment when emotional reaction begins; the 2012 “Berlin” series shot outside of the studio in six different locations in Berlin, sites reminiscent of the city’s past; the 2020 “Im Wald” which was shot purely on location and highlighted isolated people in their relationship to nature; and the 2001-2002 “Paradise Portraits”, a series of close-up shots of party goers at Amsterdam’s renowned Club Paradiso on New Year’s Eve in 2000.

Erwin Olaf’s work has been shown in major galleries throughout the world, including London’s prestigious photographic space Hamiltons Gallery, Berlin’s Wagner + Partner Gallery, Amsterdam’s Flatland Gallery, and the Galerie Magda Danysz in Paris. Museum exhibitions have included the Haifa Museum of Art in Israel, the Fondation Oriente Museu in Macau, the Museo de Arte Contemporaine de Rosario in Argentina, the National Art Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

In the spring of 2019, Olaf’s work was the subject of a double exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and The Hague Museum of Photography, as well as a solo exhibition at the Shanghai Center of Photography. In the summer of 2021, the Kunsthalle München mounted a major exhibition of 220 artworks, including Olaf’s two most recent series, the 2020 “April Fool” and “Im Wald”, the latter of which was made specially for this show.

Note: More information of Erwin Olaf’s work and extensive exhibitions, including videos in which he explains his work, can be found at London’s Hamiltons Gallery website located at: https://www.hamiltonsgallery.com/artists/erwin-olaf/overview/

Erwin Olaf’s website, which includes contact information and an extensive list of exhibitions, is located at: https://www.erwinolaf.com/art

Top Insert Image: Erwin Olaf, “Self Portrait”, Date Unknown, Color Print

Second Insert Image: Erwin Olaf, “Chessmen XII”, 1988, Gelatin Silver Print, 37.5 x37.5 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Erwin Olaf, “Kleines Requiem II”, 2022, Color Print, Edition of Ten, 110 x 110 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Erwin Olaf, “Self Portrait”, 1985, Gelatin Silver Print, Futomuseum Den Haag, The Hague, The Netherlands

Graham Candy “Glowing in the Dark”

Graham Candy, “Glowing in the Dark”, Acoustic Version

A New Zealand-born, German-based singer/songwriter and actor with a distinctive voice, the aptly named Graham Candy is a quirky and unpredictable musician. A student of music, dance, and theater from a very young age, Candy spent the majority of his career in Auckland before relocating to Berlin in 2013.

In Berlin Candy lent his voice to popular German DJ and producer Alle Farber’s international hit single “She Moves.” Collaborations with German indie pop outfit Abbey and electro-swing enthusiast Parov Stelar followed in 2014, as did the release of his Crazy Planet Records-issued solo EP, “13 Lords”.

Florian Hetz

Photography by Florian Hetz

German photographer Florian Hetz deconstructs, dissects and sexualizes the bodies of his models. He mainly shows body fragments and details: muscles, hair, faces, and genitals fill the photos.

Florian Hetz previously managed the Panorama Bar at the legendary Berlin techno club Berghain. He is based in Berlin and travels Europe photographing in the cities of the continent. The images from his shooting during December to February in 2018 in Los Angeles is available in a limited edition book titled “Echo Park”.

Image reblogged with thanks to http://eenvanvelen.tumblr.com

Source: digitalaidsss

Moderat, “Reminder”

Moderat are an electronic music group originating in Berlin between Sascha Ring, also known as Apparat, and Modeselektor members Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary. The band has released three studio albums to date. This video to “Reminder was released in February of 2016, a month before the release of their third album “III”.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Peter Aurisch

Cubist Tattoos by Peter Aurisch

Based in a quiet undisclosed studio a short train ride outside of downtown Berlin, artist Peter Aurisch creates some of the most original tattoos in the city—and in a place with an estimated 2,000 tattoo artists, that’s saying something. To keep his ideas fresh and original, Aurisch may only begin planning a new piece when the client first arrives. He tends to work freehand without sketches or source imagery, and instead draws inspiration from stories and details provided by his customers.

Aurisch is also printmaker and painter and his works (both on skin and off) are influenced in part by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and the cubism of Picasso.

Aurisch’s studio is called Johnny Nevada, a space he shares with Jessica Mach whose tattoos you should also definitely check out. He takes only a single appointment daily. Explore more of his most recent work on Instagram.

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor, “Memory”, Cor-Ten Steel Installation, 2008, Deutsche Guggenheim Museum, Berlin

Anish Kapoor’s 2008 “Memory” is a site-specific work that was conceived to engage two different exhibition locations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin and New York. Utilizing Cor-Ten steel for the first time, the sculpture represents a milestone in Kapoor’s career. Memory’s thin steel skin, only eight millimeters thick, suggests a form that is ephemeral and unmonumental. The sculpture appears to defy gravity as it gently glances against the periphery of the gallery walls and ceiling. However, as a 24-ton volume, Memory is also raw, industrial, and foreboding.

Positioned tightly within the gallery, Memory is never fully visible; instead the work fractures and divides the gallery into several distinct viewing areas. The division compels visitors to navigate the museum, searching for vantage points that offer only glimpses of the sculpture. This processional method of viewing Memory is an intrinsic aspect of the work. Visitors are asked to contemplate the ensuing fragmentation by attempting to piece together images retained in their minds, exerting effort in the act of seeing—a process Kapoor describes as creating a “mental sculpture.”

Memory’s rusting exterior creates a powdery surface, which relates this commission to Kapoor’s early pigment pieces from the 1980s. Rather than necessitating an additional coat of paint to smooth the interior curvature, the sculpture’s Cor-Ten tiles, perfectly manufactured to prevent light from seeping through, create the necessary conditions for darkness within. The work’s square aperture—wedged precisely into one of the gallery’s walls—allows a view into this boundless interior void.

The endless darkness seems to contradict what visitors know about the work’s delimited exterior. This contradiction between the known and the perceived is one of Kapoor’s central interests. The window also defines a two-dimensional plane that can be read as a painting rather than an opening. Kapoor’s interest in this pictorial effect is best reflected in his statement “I am a painter working as a sculptor.”