Lust for Life (English version)

The Nederlands Fotomuseum manages the complete archive of Ed van der Elsken’s negatives and slides and has recently successfully completed the enormous project of restoring 42,000 colour slides by Van der Elsken. As such, the colour works of one of the most influential Dutch photographers has been safeguarded for the future. This achievement will be celebrated with the retrospective exhibition Lust for Life | Ed van der Elsken in colour and a comprehensive publication about his works in colour.

Photographer and filmmaker Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990) gained global fame with his black-and-white photography. For a significant part of his working life, however, he worked in colour. He began this in the early fifties during his stay in Paris. In the late sixties he even switched almost completely over to colour for several audio-visual pieces and in his travel reports for the weekly publication Revu and the monthly Avenue. His most important books in colour are EYE LOVE YOU (1977), Hallo! A new Ed van der Elsken (1978) and Adventures on the land (1980).

This is the first comprehensive overview of Van der Elsken’s works in colour. It follows his development as a ‘colour photographer’ and places his colour photography in an (art) historical context. As well as space for relatively unknown and never before published photos, there is also attention for the restoration of the 42,000 slides carried out by the Nederlands Fotomuseum between 2016 and 2018.