The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has opened a major retrospective exhibition honoring the work of renowned Dutch photographer and visual artist Erwin Olaf, who passed away in 2023. The exhibition, titled "Freedom," offers an intimate look into the creative process of the artist whose iconoclastic work continues to shine brightly in the contemporary art world.
Erwin Olaf would have absolutely loved the opening of his exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum on October 10, two years after his death. Among the thousand guests present, all his friends were there, electrifying the atmosphere with joyous eccentricity. Dwarfs, drag queens, and sad clowns in pointed hats perched on stilts - companions from his wild parties and activist battles - surrounded Shirley Den Hartog, his faithful associate who supported him until the end and has since created a foundation dedicated to perpetuating his work.
This is undoubtedly the maestro's most personal exhibition. While it's true that the Kunstmuseum in The Hague had dedicated a retrospective to him in 2019, and the Rijksmuseum had, in the same year, juxtaposed his photographs with paintings by the great Flemish masters who fascinated him so much, this first posthumous exhibition in Amsterdam brings a new perspective to the artist's creative process by showing how inextricably linked it was to his engaged life as a man. Few of his iconic works are presented, but when they are, it's to better deliver his messages, as this beloved child of the country, ennobled by the king, never ceased fighting in the name of all freedoms, starting with his own.
Erwin Olaf Springveld was born on July 2, 1959, in Hilversum, into a middle-class Dutch family. While studying journalism in Utrecht, he developed a passion for photography, realizing he felt more comfortable with images than with words. The young man hid his shyness behind his camera lens to better understand others. With his degree in hand, Olaf collaborated with various publications and discovered Amsterdam's underground scene. The protesting street became his favorite playground, and he covered peace marches, squatter riots, and Gay Pride demonstrations that shook the early 1980s, all while AIDS was already wreaking havoc in his circle.
By the end of the decade, it was in the studio - which he would rarely leave thereafter - that he perfected his photographic technique and refined his aesthetic with characteristic lighting inspired by the chiaroscuro of the Dutch school. Erwin Olaf began staging himself in self-portraits with political significance, true pamphlets that promoted tolerance and denounced the chaos of the world. Already, he wanted to provoke and disturb conventional minds, sometimes even crudely suggesting homosexual acts, thus breaking established codes.
In 1988, his "Chessmen" series won him the prestigious Young European Photographer prize and propelled him onto the international artistic scene. Major brands competed for his services, and money flowed abundantly, but this didn't prevent him from denouncing the excesses of the fashion industry in 2000. As a fervent defender of the LGBT cause, Erwin Olaf organized stunning parties at the Paradiso club. In all his actions and creations, he sublimated differences, whether physical or identity-based, and advocated for the freedom to be oneself.
When he was diagnosed with hereditary emphysema at age 36, the man became more settled and took care of his health. His later series became gentler, although still imbued with implacable messages. Some, like "April Fool," created during the COVID crisis, or "Im Wald," an ode to nature endangered by mass tourism, are being presented for the first time. Endowed with a keen sense of self-deprecation, the perfectionist had meticulously conceived, while awaiting his lung transplant, what would be his last self-portrait: his surgeon holding his two diseased organs in her hands - an ultimate and moving provocation.
Upon awakening from the operation, his first concern was the success of this photograph. During his convalescence, the tireless worker escaped daily from his apartment on Egelantiersgracht to find in his studio a vase of peonies, his favorite flowers, and film them blooming and then withering, thus demonstrating life's inexorable cycle. It was Shirley and the studio teams who completed this last moving piece to present it at the Stedelijk Museum.
Shortly before his sudden disappearance, Erwin had mischievously confided to his longtime accomplice his desire to be exhibited in this museum that he had so loved to hate. From his little-known early black and white reportages, printed by himself, to his latest color stagings, including videos and original sculptures, "Freedom" is a chronological and thematic journey through the career of a funny and endearing man who assumed his creative audacity until his last breath. The exhibition runs at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam until March 1, 2026.
