Background
Eduard van der Elsken was born on March 10, 1925, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was a son of Eduard van der Elsken and Huberta Johanna Gijsberdina Pardoel.
1952
Ed van der Elsken with his first wife Ata Kandó in their flat in Paris.
1966
Museumplein 10, 1071 DJ Amsterdam, Netherlands
Ed van der Elsken at his 1966 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Eduard van der Elsken in his childhood (in the center).
Luchthavenweg 25, 5657 EA Eindhoven, Netherlands
The modern building of Eindhoven Airport where Ed van der Elsken worked as an interpreter in 1943.
Ed van der Elsken with a photo camera.
Eduard van der Elsken was born on March 10, 1925, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was a son of Eduard van der Elsken and Huberta Johanna Gijsberdina Pardoel.
Ed van der Elsken spent his childhood in Betondorp suburb of Amsterdam.
In 1937, van der Elsken was an apprentice at Van Tetterode Steenhouwerij where he studied stone-cutting. After the preliminary courses that he attended at the Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs (currently the Gerrit Rietveld Academie), he enrolled at the professional sculpture program but soon dropped it fleeing from Nazi forced labor.
Later, Ed van der Elsken started to attend the evening trade school with an intention to become a projectionist. Picture Post photojournalistic magazine that he came across during this period pushed him to change the course of his studies.
In 1947, he began to take correspondence courses at the Fotovakschool college of photography in The Hague, but couldn't pass the final examination.
The start of Eduard van der Elsken’s career can be counted from 1943 when he began to work as an interpreter in Eindhoven Airport. Then, van der Elsken joined the mine clearance service and was sent to Belgium to study the dismantlement of explosives.
After the liberation of the Netherlands, Eduard came back to Amsterdam where he earned his living working as a technical proofreader in De Arbeiderspers publishing house. It was then when the future photographer came across Weegee’s book of black and white photos, ‘Naked City’. The volume documenting the dark side of New York city life in the 1930s and 1940s heightened van der Elsken’s interest in photography.
At the end of the decade, van der Elsken made the first attempts in the field using his father’s 9 x 12-inch plate camera to take pictures in the streets of Amsterdam. Simultaneously, he earned money to purchase a Rolleicord camera assisting village photographer Jan Brouwer in Wormerveer, a photographer Louis van Beurden, and working part-time at Nico Zomer’s studio.
In 1949, Eduard van der Elsken enlarged the circle of his photo peers through the photographer's section of the Dutch Association of Practitioners of the Applied Arts, or GKf which he entered. It was there where he met his future lifelong friend and colleague, a journalist and author Jan Vrijman. Having a moderate number of commissions on his homeland, van der Elsken followed the advice of a Dutch photographer Emmy Andriesse and moved to Paris in 1950 searching for better opportunities.
Upon his relocation, van der Elsken joined the staff of the photographic agency Magnum Photos newly established by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger, and David Seymour. The young photographer was quickly involved in the artistic community of the city full of the same immigrants as he was who came to the capital in the turbulent post-war period. Van der Elsken’s photos of the time documented this tumultuous atmosphere and people whom he got aquatinted with, like a curator of photography at the New York Museum of Modern Art, Edward Steichen, and an Australian artist Vali Myers. The photographer spent a lot of time with his camera on the streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés as well.
Steichen chose several of Van der Elsken’s pictures to be demonstrated at a 1953 Postwar European Photography exhibition and the Family of Man show in a couple of years. He also recommended Eduard to gather all his photos in one book. After a series of rejection from several publishing houses, one of Van der Elsken’s well-known series, a roman à clef photo-novel Een liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, or ‘Love on the left bank’ was issued in four parts by a British magazine Picture Post in 1954 and in the Dutch magazine Wereldkroniek. The volume was quickly snapped up in Europe and the United Kingdom. In a couple of years, the Dutch, English and German translations of the volume saw the publication.
The publication coincided with his first solo show held at the Art Institute of Chicago which presented sixty-two of his photos. The United States exhibition was followed by a debut solo show on his homeland two years later.
The film-like character of his ‘Love on the left bank’, made a start for the subsequent experiments of the photographer with the cinema. Soon after the debut publication, Van der Elsken met television director Leen Timp and created his first 16mm film, the first of his twenty subsequent movies, with Jan Vrijman about Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), known as CERN.
Then, Eduard van der Elsken made regular trips around the world, including Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Mexico, Central Africa, and India, Malawi, Madagascar, Brazil, Haiti, and the Solomon Islands which resulted in the publications of new photo reportages as well as movies from the regions he visited and the events he witnessed. Van der Elsken exhibited his works in his native Amsterdam, including the shows at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam as well as in the art galleries in Europe, Japan, and the United States.
The last movie project of van der Elsken became a 1990 autobiographical Bye documenting the progress of his terminal prostate cancer.
San Francisco
San Francisco
Hong Kong
Poster for a bookstore selling racist anti-white lecture, Harlem, New York
Disneyland California
42nd street NY
Durban, South-Africa
Moskou
Cuba
Call and Ruby Black in front of their museum, Mojave Desert, USA, 1960
Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 1950
Wereldreis (Afrika)
Lionel Hampton, Big Band, 1956
Japan
Medal ceremony for weightlifting, Olympic Games in Mexico
Osaka, Japan. A Western-style, Slightly 'Beat' Bar
Gypsy Children, Portugal
Cemetery of Tokyo Temple
Cuba
Coney Island, NY
Guadalajara
Tokyo, Ginza
Osaka
Hong Kong
Paludismo
Labour Day Parade, New York
Vali Myers in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris
Three Children
Nieumarket, Amsterdam
Dizzy Gillespie, May 1958
Quotations: "I'm not a journalist, an objective reporter, I'm a man with likes and dislikes."
Quotes from others about the person
"Van der Elsken uses this demanding medium like a novelist, describing a cast of characters, a place, a mood, time, plot, and dramatic development... he does not pose or direct the subjects; there is nothing faked in his story." Peter Pollack
Ed van der Elsken was married three times. His first wife became a photographer Ata Kandó in 1954. The family produced three children. Eduard and Ata separated a year after.
In 1957, van der Elsken married another photographer, Gerda van der Veen. Gerda gave birth to Tinelou and Daan. Ed and Gerda divorced in 1973.
The last life partner of Ed van der Elsken was a photographer Anneke Hilhorst with whom he had a son Johnny.