February 3, 2019

Dutch street photography by Merel Schoneveld

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 11:28 pm

Merel Schoneveld is a selt-taught Dutch street photographer who considers the streets of Rotterdam and The Hague, as well as the beaches of her home town Scheveningen as her hunting grounds.

According to her biography, she has only been a street photographer since 2016. “One day, in the fall of 2016 I was walking around town trying out a new lens for an old camera I had. A camera I hadn’t touched in years. I knew nothing about street photography back then, all I knew is that I had to go back and do it again.”

“Since then capturing and collecting moments from the lives of total strangers became a serious obsession.”

Schoneveld’s work is on display this week at the Rotterdam Art Week from February 7 – 10.

(Photos: Merel Schoneveld; via VICE)

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April 28, 2016

King’s Day 2016 in Amsterdam through the lens of René Louman’s camera

Filed under: Event,Photography by Branko Collin @ 4:58 pm

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Rain and wind disrupted this year’s King’s Day. The rain largely passed by Amsterdam, but it was still cold enough that visitors had to dress warmer than usual.

Amsterdam-based photographer René Louman took to the streets and captured the rainy streets of the day before, the King’s Day Eve concert of the Amsterdam Klezmer Band and the King’s Day festivities in the city. He also has a good comparison of how busy it was last year and how quiet this year.

Telegraaf speculates that the weather kept many people indoors. Last year’s daytime broadcast of the royal visit to Dordrecht drew 2.5 million viewers, this year’s broadcast of King Willem-Alexander’s visit to Zwolle had 3.4 million viewers.

Like every year Orangemaster and I went to the area around Apollolaan in Amsterdam to look for good deals on the nationwide flea market. I managed to score a camera bag for 2 euro that still had a camera in it!

(Photo: René Louman)

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July 7, 2014

Van der Elsken’s beehive girl has a name

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 12:27 pm

beehive-girl-ed-van-der-elsken

‘Funfair on the Nieuwmarkt, girl with beehive’ (‘Kermis op de Nieuwmarkt, meisje met suikerspinkapsel) is one of the main pieces of Ed van der Elsken’s retrospective exhibition at the the municipal archive of Amsterdam, but until recently the subject of the photo remained unknown.

The archive asked its Facebook followers if they knew who this girls was. As it turns out her widower recognised her in a previous exhibition and was all too happy to share her name: Margriet Swart.

Van der Elsken (1925-1990) was a street photographer and an important chronicler for Amsterdam during one of its most interesting periods, the 1950s and 1960s, when nozems (Dutch black leather jacket ‘bad boy’ type) provos (Dutch anti-establishment ‘bad boy’ type) made the city an interesting place to be again.

De Groene Amsterdammer explains his role: “Van der Elsken had an eye for what was brewing under that grey reality, a sense for rebellion and bold adventure, against the long leather coats and the bull pizzles of the police. This brewing is visible everywhere in Van der Elsken’s photos, in the faces of the boys hanging out in the streets and in the eyes of the girls at the funfairs.”

The exhibition, Amsterdam!, runs until 14 September 2014.

(Link: PhotoQ; illustration: PhotoQ / Ed van der Elsken)

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