Last week I visited the exhibition ‘The camera in love’ about the life and works of Dutch street photographer and film maker Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990). The exhibition took place at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Although a large part of Ed van der Elsken’s work deals with Amsterdam, he traveled and worked all around the world. He made some of his best known work in Paris and Japan.

His photographic style is quite recognizable. Most of his pictures are high contrast black and white pictures of street scenes and people who live on on the seamy side of life (bohemiens, transvestites, gangsters, etc.). In the latter part of his work he comes across as a kind of Nan Goldin ‘avant la lettre’.

Although I personally I do not really like his work, because it is too one-dimensional and pessimistic to my taste, I do recommend everyone to visit his exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (open until May 21, 2017). It shows all his movies and the most important of his photographs, as well as his letters, notebooks, etc. The set-up of the exhibition is great: the exhibition of his pictures felt spacious and there were dedicated locations where his movies could be seen.

Pictures by Ed van der Elsken

Pictures by Ed van der Elsken

The pictures of the museum and exhibition below are taken with my Olympus OMD-E-M10 with the standard 14-42 mm kit lens. The pictures were post-processed with Adobe Lightroom.