bintphotobooks - Joan van der Keuken the PHOTONOVELs

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger : The Photobook: A History volume 1/ The Indecisive Moment: The 'Stream-of-Consciousness' Photobook

In 1955, the 17-year-old Joan van der Keuken caused a stir in Dutch publishing with his book Wij zijn 17 (We are 17), prefiguring the even greater furore that would greet the publication of Ed van der Elsken's Een Liefedesgeschiedenis in Saint Germain des Pres (Love on the Left Bank) a year later. Van der Keuken's book was as innovative as Van der Elsken's in its treatment of a section of society - not a class exactly, but a societal group - that was beginning to be regarded as a class apart.

It is sometimes forgotten in these days of 'youth culture' that it was only from around the 1950s onwards that the young were first talked about in this way. Previously they had been regarded - give a modicum of wild oats sowing and youthful high spirits - largely as replicas of their parents. In the 1950s, however, with its anxious air of repressed rebellion, such attitudes were overturned. The Beat Generation, the Beatnik movement, James Dean - the original rebel without a cause - and a pouting, gyrating phenomenon called Elvis Presley, drew the world's attention to the fact that, since the war, a new alien seemed to have been dropped on the planet - the teenager.

Van der Keuken's two books, Wij zijn 17 and his followup, Achter Glas (Behind Glass, 1957), caught this mood perfectly. Whilst perhaps not stream-of-consciousness in style, they certainly are in terms of attitude, capturing a moment's experience in which nothing much happens except for the moment itself. The 30 pictures in Wij zijn 17 are tellingly simple. Students lounge around in their rooms, doing nothing very much, as if waiting for their adult lives to begin. The mood is uncertain, capturing that moment when childhood ends and youth must take a deep breath and step out into the world.

This was also the theme of Achter Glas, Van der Keuken's second foray into the new form of the 'photonovel'. Two sisters, Georgette and Yvonne, do little more than sit by a window, day-dreaming. And it was this youthful lassitude, this apparent aimlessness, perfectly expressed by Van der Keuken, that caused a degree of controversy. But this view of teenage rebellion at the sulky rather than more active stage rings painfully true. It became a model for other books examining the same phenomenon, not he least of which is the recent work of Van der Keuken's compatriot, Helen van Meene, whose similar view od Dutch adolescents - now in colour - has also proved controversial.

Titel: Wij zijn 17 / foto's Johan van der Keuken ; ingeleid door
Simon Carmiggelt ; [red. Paul Andriesse ... et al. ; essay Willem Ellenbroek ; vert. inl. Michael Gibbs ... et al.]
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Medewerker: Simon Johannes Carmiggelt (1913-1987); Paul Andriesse (1955-); Willem Ellenbroek; Michael Gibbs
Jaar: 2005
Uitgever: Amsterdam : Andriesse
[Amsterdam] : De Verbeelding [distr.]
Annotatie: Hernieuwde uitg., met toegevoegd essay, van de 1e dr.:
Bussum : Van Dishoeck, 1955
Inleiding tevens in het Engels en Frans
Omvang: [80] p. : foto's. ; 24 cm
ISBN: 90-74159-77-X

Titel: Bewogen beelden : films, foto's, teksten uit de wereld
van een kleine zelfstandige / Johan van der Keuken ; [red.: Mieke Bernink]
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Medewerker: Mieke Bernink (1959-)
Jaar: cop. 2001
Uitgever: Breda : De Geus
Annotatie: Met filmogr., reg
Omvang: 240 p. : ill. ; 23Ã-24 cm
ISBN: 90-445-0168-2 geb.

Titel: De Spaanse schreeuw / Johan van der Keuken
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Jaar: 2001
Uitgever: Amsterdam : Galerie Paul Andriesse
Annotatie: Colofon vermeldt: De Spaanse schreeuw = le cri Espagnol = the Spanish cry. - Opl. van 800 ex
Omvang: 12 foto's. : ill. ; 32 cm
ISBN: In map

Titel: L' oeil lucide : l'oeuvre photographique 1953-2000 = The lucid eye : the photographic work 1953-2000 / Johan van der Keuken [photogr. ; texte Alain Bergala ; trad.
Vertaalcentrum VU] The lucid eye
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Medewerker: Alain Bergala (1943-)
Jaar: 2001
Editie: 1re ed
Uitgever: Amsterdam : De Verbeelding Publishing
Montreuil : Editions de l'Oeil
Annotatie: Tekst in het Frans en Engels
Omvang: 235 p. : ill. ; 23x26 cm
ISBN: 90-74159-31-1 geb., 2-912415-04-7 geb.

Titel: Johan van der Keuken : aventures d'un regard : films, photos, textes / edition etablie en collab. avec Francois Albera ; [trad. du neerlandais par Rene Cesar ... et al. ; effectuees pour le present ouvrage par Annette Eskenazi Aventures d'un regard
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Medewerker: Francois Albera (1948-); Rene Cesar; Annette Eskenazi
Jaar: cop. 1998
Uitgever: [Paris] : Cahiers du Cinema
Annotatie: Een gedeelte van de foto's zijn in maart-april 1998
tentoongesteld in het kader van de manifestatie "Le Corps et la Ville/Expositions, installations et films" in de Balie te Amsterdam
Met biogr., filmogr. en bibliogr Vert. en uitgebreide versie van: Zien, kijken, filmen : foto's, teksten en interviews. - Amsterdam : Van Gennep, 1980
Omvang: 239 p. : ill., foto's. ; 29 cm
ISBN: 2-86642-221-X geb.

Titel: Lichaam & stad : exposities, installaties en films / Johan van der Keuken ; in samenw. met Jeroen de Vries = Body and
city : exhibitions, installations and films / Johan van der keuken ; in collaboration with Jeroen de Vries = Le corps et la ville : expositions, installations et films / Johan van der Keuken ; in collaboration avec Jeroen de Vries ; [vert.: Sheila Gogol ... et al. ; red.: Nicole Willemse] Body and city Le corps et la ville Lichaam en stad
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Medewerker: Jeroen de Vries (1947-); Sheila Gogol; Nicole Willemse
Jaar: cop. 1998
Uitgever: Amsterdam : De Balie
Omvang: 47 p. : ill. ; 20 cm
ISBN: 90-6617-214-2

Titel: After-image = Nabeeld / [Johan van der Keuken] ; red.,
ed. Fred Struving, Johan van der Keuken ; met tekstbijdragen van, with contributions by J. Bernlef ... et al. ; [vert., transl. Elliot Eisenberg ... et al.]
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Medewerker: Fred Struving; J. Bernlef pseud. van Hendrik Jan Marsman; Elliott Eisenberg
Jaar: 1991
Uitgever: Amsterdam : Fragment
Annotatie: Engelse en Nederlandse tekst Met bibliogr
Omvang: 183 p. : ill., foto's. ; 33 cm
ISBN: 90-6579-012-8 geb.

Titel: Daar, toen, hier : de films van Johan van der Keuken /
Pauline Terreehorst
Auteur: Pauline Terreehorst (1952-)
Jaar: cop. 1988
Uitgever: Houten : Het Wereldvenster
Annotatie: In samenw. met de Stichting Filmuitgaven Met filmografie, reg
Omvang: 92 p. : foto's. ; 24 cm
ISBN: 90-269-4677-5

Titel: Abenteuer eines Auges : Filme, Photos, Texte / Johan van der Keuken ; [Red. und Gestaltung: Jutta Hercher ... et al.] ; Ubersetzung: Birgit Baumgarten, Archie C. Fuer, Leo van de Velde]
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Medewerker: Jutta Hercher; Birgit Baumgarten
Jaar: 1987
Uitgever: Hamburg : Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste Reeks: Material ; 69
Omvang: 186 p. : ill. ; 27 cm
ISBN: : kart. : DM 9.00

Titel: Herman Hertzberger : six architectures / photographieÌes par Johan van der Keuken
Auteur: Herman Hertzberger (1932-)
Medewerker: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Organisatie: Musee d'Art et d'Histoire de Geneve
Jaar: 1985
Uitgever: Milano : Electa
Annotatie: Ce livre est lie directement a l'exposition presente au Musee d'Art et d'Histoire de Geneve (5 juillet-15 septembre 1985), ... (keerzijde titelblad) Met lit. opg
Omvang: 123 p. : ill. ; 24 cm
ISBN: 88-435-1142-4

Titel: Jazzportretten / Bert Vuijsje ; met bijdragen van Simon
Korteweg en Johan van der Keuken
Auteur: Bert Vuijsje (1942-)
Medewerker: Simon Korteweg; Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Jaar: 1983
Uitgever: Amsterdam : Van Gennep
Annotatie: De meeste interviews in dit boek werden, doorgaans in
iets andere vorm eerder gepubliceerd in Jazzwereld, Haagse Post, Oor en Jazz NU
Omvang: 143 p. ; 20 cm
ISBN: 90-6012-569-X

Titel: Zien, kijken, filmen : foto's, teksten en interviews / van Johan van der Keuken
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Jaar: 1980
Uitgever: Amsterdam : Van Gennep
Omvang: 160 p. : ill. ; 27 cm
ISBN: 90-6012-458-8

Titel: Het versierde leven en de eigen tijd : een publikatie ter gelegenheid van het twintigjarig bestaan van het
Nederlands Cultureel Contact / red.: J. van Riemsdijk ;
[foto's J. van der Keuken, tekeningen Lucebert]
Medewerker: Jan van Riemsdijk (1931-); Johan van der Keuken
(1938-2001); Lucebert pseud. van Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk
Organisatie: Nederlands Cultureel Contact
Jaar: 1968
Uitgever: Amsterdam : Polak & Van Gennep
Annotatie: Een speelse verkenning van de mogelijkheden op het terrein van kunst en cultuur en een viertal vrije portretten van
mensen die zich de tijd op kunstige wijze eigenden
Omvang: 90 p. : ill. ; 21 cm

Titel: Paris mortel : foto's / Joan van der Keuken
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Jaar: [ca.1963]
Uitgever: Hilversum
Omvang: 67 p. ; 29 cm

Stoottroep van Christus. Jubileumuitgave van het Nationaal Hoofdkwartier bij het 75-jarig bestaan van het Leger des Heils in Nederland. [Photography Emile van Moerkerken, A. Verburg, Victor Meeussen, Johan van der Keuken, Leonard Freed en E. Munks.

Amsterdam / 1962 / 72 p. / hb. / 23x18cm / 132/ portretten en documentaire foto's / fotografen en heilsoldaten, samenkomsten, contact met mens en samenleving. - Ill. 28 b&w photographs / tekening, schilderijen, prenten, striptekeningen / cameralens, predikers, zendingsgebieden, vlag, hoofdkwartier, aardbol). / NN / Firmenschrift / Photographie - Anthologie - Auftragsphotographie, commissioned photography - Nederland, Niederlande - 20. Jahrh. / Printed by (diepdruk). - Opdrachtgever: (75-jarig bestaan). - Kenmerken van beeldverhaal en filmisch scenario. Kleine fotoseries zijn in de vorm van filmstroken gepresenteerd. Rode colorvlakken en kapitalen ondersteunen de bonte opmaak. Zes fotografen hebben ieder een bepaald facet van de internationale organisatie in beeld gebracht

Keuken, Joan van der
Achter glas.

Amsterdam / 1961 / First edition / gravure printed plates / - / NN / Buch / Photographie - Monographie - 20. Jahrh. / Text nederl.

Titel: Wij zijn 17 / foto's van Joan v.d. Keuken ; ingel. door S.
Carmiggelt Wij zijn zeventien
Auteur: Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001)
Jaar: 1955
Uitgever: Bussum : Van Dishoeck
Omvang: Ongepag., [32 bl. pl.]. ; 24 cm

See also Platte Jungle ...

Titel:	DE PLATTE JUNGLE
Maker:	Regie: Johan van der Keuken Componist: Willem Breuker Scenario: Johan van der Keuken Camera: Johan van der Keuken Producent: Chris Brouwers Producent: Johan van der Keuken Montage: Jan Dop Montage: Johan van der Keuken Geluid: Menno Euwe Geluid: Noshka van der Lely

Verv.jaar:	1978 1978
Verv.plaats:	Friesland Ameland Terschelling Waddenzee
Copyright:	Via Filmmuseum
Object:	video
Opmerking:	Speelduur: 90 minuten (fragment: 15 minuten) Origineel: [16mm/kleur/geluid] ( [Filmmuseum, Amsterdam])

De film belicht de Waddenzee vanuit verschillende hoeken. Daarbij wordt aandacht besteed aan de historische waddencultuur, economie, natuur en de emotionele dimensie van leven en werken in dit gebied. Hierbij gaat Van der Keuken uitgebreid in op een aantal thema''s die van invloed zijn op de Waddenzee, maar die ook in breder perspectief van belang zijn. Bijvoorbeeld ecologische problemen door chemische industrie en kerncentrales, de opkomst van grootschalige landbouw, de mechanisering van de visserij en het belang van het biologisch boerenbedrijf. Deze thema''s worden in de ritmische montage doorsneden met landschappen en watervlakten. Dit gebeurt in samenspel met zeer snelle jazzmuziek van Willem Breuker. Het gekozen fragment is een interview met een Groninger visser die uitlegt waarom hij weer op traditionele wijze op tong is gaan vissen. Het fragment eindigt met een betoging tegen kernenergie.

The works of photographer Johan van der Keuken revolve around life and death. He studied at the IDHEC film school in Paris, France, under a two-year scholarship after his book 'We Are 17,' gained considerable attention in Holland. van der Keuken's works have been exhibited at several museums, including the Cinematheque Quebecoise in Montreal, Quebec, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France.

Johan van der Keuken has been rediscovered at least once every decade since the first appearance of his work in the '50s. In 1955 - he was seventeen at the time - a precocious book of photo portraits (entitled, appropriately enough, We Are 17) earned him considerable attention in his native Holland; a two-year scholarship to the prestigious IDHEC film school in Paris followed. In 1965-66, a major exhibition of his photographs made its way to various Dutch museums, and in 1975 the Cinematheque Quebecoise in Montreal granted van der Keuken his first film retrospective outside the Netherlands. His photographs returned to the fore in 1980 with a survey at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and in 1987 a photo retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris was coupled with a full-scale film survey at the Cinemathique Francaise.

And yet, as van der Keuken himself points out, for all the recurring bursts of recognition (accompanied by an increasing number of awards since the mid-'80s), there has always been something "troubling" about his work, which has undoubtedly contributed to the inconstancy of his celebrity outside a limited circle of initiates. The brooding, existentialist portraits of his classmates in We Are 17 clashed so much with Holland's postwar optimism that a counter-album, We Are Also 17, soon appeared. His early experimental films, like Paris a l'aube (Paris at dawn) (1957-60), a ten-minute sequence of long, static views of the city shot every morning at 4 A.M., were dismissed as "photographic," while those of the '70s, notably North-South Triptych (1972-74), were marginalized because of their radical politics (not to mention their experimental form). Increasingly complex works in recent years continue to defy received notions of film versus photography, documentary versus fiction, and public versus private art: Amsterdam Global Village (1996), for example, is a look at the postcolonial metropolis as a post-McLuhan mosaic. It begins with a colorful St. Nicholas festival on Amsterdam's canals, and circles village and globe for more than four hours before culminating in a polysexual fantasy filmed behind an august facade overlooking the same canals.

At sixty, van der Keuken certainly has a wider following than he did at seventeen or even at fifty. Amsterdam Global Village (its length notwithstanding) was released commercially in France in 1997, and in the fall of 1998 van der Keuken was the guest of honor at the Mois de la Photo, Paris's biennial photography festival. The constellation of multimedia installations, photo exhibits, and film screenings that he presented on that occasion, under the collective title "Body and City," was as "troubling" as ever. The core component, oddly enough "decentralized" to Le Fresnoy art school in Tourcoing, was entitled The Central Body, a 27-foot-high semitransparent structure (sculpture? billboard? movie screen?) on which (and from which) are projected slides and film clips - a sort of audiovisual enactment of the global village: Sniper fire from Sarajevo can be heard behind burned-out buildings on New York's Lower East Side; skaters on Amsterdam's frozen canals are just a blink away from the sex shops in the red light district. Van der Keuken recalled with satisfaction that in Amsterdam, where the piece was originally installed, visitors to the space could not only roam among the images and sounds, but sip coffee and read newspapers on the structure's tablelike base.

On a smaller scale, the satellite installations of "Body and City," which were presented in four separate venues in Paris, combined photo friezes, wall collages, and photograms with films and tape loops to evoke, among other things, street life (or death) in Amsterdam, La Paz, New York, and Sarajevo. Like The Central Body, these mini-environments combining still and moving images were intended as the title "Body and City" also implies - to draw visitors into and out of the exhibition space, to transform spectators into active participants, and, ultimately, to recall the violence and chaos of "what's happening on the street."

On the smallest scale of all, van der Keuken created a special installation for the presentation of his most recent film, Last Words - My Sister Yoka (1935-1997)(1998). based on conversations he and his wife had with his older sister, a psychoanalyst, the week before she died of cancer, this intimate portrait that is also a self-portrait (or, as van der Keuken calls it, his sister's "last project") was presented in a tiny alcove set up in the vast Maison Europeenne de la Photographie: a handful of chairs, a TV-sized monitor, a table lamp, a bouquet of flowers - and three framed photographs of Yoka from We Are 17.

From the microcosm of Last Words to the macrocosm of The Central Body, "Body and City" was less a retrospective than what van der Keuken terms a whole new phase in his work. His images, he maintains, have a life of their own, which allows them to "travel" from one of his films to another - to be taken out of their original context, decomposed, and recomposed, like a jazz improvisation (indeed, in a series of '80s "film-concerts" with composer Willem Breuker and his jazz orchestra, the musicians improvised around and over excerpts from his films). In "Body and City," van der Keuken juxtaposed photographs and films to probe their physical and metaphysical relations. Between stasis and motion, he explained, "there is the hypothetical moment where the thing takes off . . . like the moment between life and death. Or, as I said in Filmmaker's Holiday [1974], the transition between death and life. You can't see it - it has to be created." And indeed, with Last Words, the candor of brother and sister in their exchange of family recollections and philosophical reflections is such that the "transition" is achieved: fifty minutes of immortality.

The search for this point "where the movement starts," the creative passage from death to life, has taken van der Keuken through seven albums and books of photographs, fifty-three hybrid nonfiction, nondocumentary films, and a sizable corpus of critical essays (including a regular column, "From the World of a Small Entrepreneur," for the Dutch film magazine Skrien) in which he pursues his dual preoccupations with artistic form and social content. The material possibilities have clearly expanded over the years, from the "poor" films of the '60s and his shoestring travels outside Europe in the early '70s to the literally global venture of Amsterdam Global Village, with its excursions to Bolivia, Thailand, and Chechnya - to say nothing of "Body and City," which was produced ("like a film") with funding from the Dutch government and major Dutch cultural organizations.

What has not changed is van der Keuken's no-frills, artisanal method. His two years of film school (largely spent taking photographs in the streets of Paris, on the model of William Klein's New York) made it clear that the industry. approach was not for him. "I had to find my own way into the cinema, not the one with a big production line and a division of labor, but something that came much more from my body. I fell back on my experience as a photographer, and came to see that I had to work alone or with other people who were very close to me." To date, van der Keuken has shot all but four of his films himself (he interviews while he shoots - in his equally fluent Dutch, English, or French), and he has edited or co-edited all of them. He generally works in tandem with his wife, Noshka van der Lely, who records the sound; their mini-crew sometimes expands to three when they take on a local contact person who speaks the language, or even four "in situations that might be risky, when we need someone else, like our producer, for example, who's very big."

A recent documentary on van der Keuken's work, Living with Your Eyes (dir. Ramon Gieling, 1997), follows the crew of two as they film To Sang Photo Studio (1997), a thirty-four-minute day-in-the-life of a Chinese portrait photographer in Amsterdam: Like seasoned dancing partners, the cameraman and soundwoman glide in and around their subjects, together and apart, communicating and coordinating without words. "We feel like amateurs," comments van der Lely in the documentary, "but if the crew is too big, it imposes a distance. We'd rather stick with the two of us, like a single body."

This physical and psychological proximity lies at the heart of van der Keuken's style. He is everywhere in his work - looking, talking, filming, and taking us to places we do not necessarily belong or wish to be. His very presence in the films reminds us that the "reality" we see is in fact a visual jazzman's improvisation, an approach that hides neither the medium's implicit artifice nor life's, an approach that, in taking the risk of "troubling" us, brings us much closer to that elusive transition "between death and life" - the point where the movement begins.

Miriam Rosen is a writer based in Paris.

Dutch Standards in the Photobook a History Parr Badger

Dutch Eyes Nieuwe geschiedenis van de Fotografie in Nederland

Photography between covers

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