Why photographer Erwin Olaf was not allowed to exhibit in the Stedelijk Museum in the past, but is now allowed to do so

The conversation is almost at the end, when suddenly the word that really matters here is uttered: ‘Artist’. Rein Wolfs, director of the Stedelijk Museum since 2019, says it almost casually, as if it were actually very common, as if it had not been preceded by a few decades of discussions: “Erwin Olaf,” says Wolfs, was an “artist with photography as a medium.”

‘Artist’; Here it is a subtly different formulation than simply ‘photographer’ – but a formulation that has a long history behind it, a struggle of directions in a certain sense even. At least, that was the case for Erwin Olaf, one of the most famous photographers in the Netherlands, who died in 2023. He had always wanted to exhibit in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the most important museum for modern art in the Netherlands, but it never happened.

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He did receive national fame, as well as international recognition. He exhibited in the Groninger Museum, in the Fotomuseum The Hague; in the Rijksmuseum he was presented as a descendant of the Old Masters. He received prizes and appeared on talk shows, but he did not come to the Stedelijk. According to Olaf himself, that was a conscious rejection, as he says several times in Mischa Cohen’s biography Erwin Olaf Springveld. Work hard, party hard: his example is Robert Mapplethorpe, Jeff Koons, with whose provocations he felt related at the time, and also photographer Rineke Dijkstra, his contemporary. But him? It was said that his work was too commercial and, unlike Koons, had “no layers”, as NRC in 2003 – partly because of which Olaf changed his style and started making more contemplative work.

Now, two years after his death, there is an exhibition of Olaf’s work in the Stedelijk Museum: Erwin Olaf – Freedom. And according to director Wolfs, who responded to Erwin Olaf’s Studio’s request, now is exactly the “right time” for it.

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Do you think that the Stedelijk actually “ignored” Erwin Olaf in the past, as he sometimes said?

“Erwin Olaf has always regarded the lack of a solo exhibition as a problem njet of the ‘chic Stedelijk’ compared to his work. But it is not the case that he was shown the door, his work was purchased, he had an exhibition in the Stedelijk annex in the early 1990s and a photo project in the Stedelijk…”

He was of course referring to the lack of acceptance of the ‘high’ art world, which at the time would see him as too commercial or too flat. Would you have exhibited his work in the 2000s or 2010s?

“I was not asked that question at the time, but no, I don’t think so. It was a different time, there was a different view of what art should be. The idea of ​​art was more of an elite idea. I may have been a bit more arrogant in my opinion at times – and I have moved on from that, I have also previously exhibited the photographer Jürgen Teller in Bonn at the intersection of art, fashion and popular culture. This time requires a revision of judgments.”

How would you describe that revision?

“When I came to the Stedelijk, the art world was confronted with concepts such as inclusion and diversity, and I immediately embraced those concepts. But it was then also pointed out to me that the concept of inclusion can also have turned inward. Since then, I prefer to use the word ‘broadening’ for the Stedelijk’s policy: we believe in many parallel stories, and no longer in one linear art history. Erwin Olaf exists in one of those art histories and also has its own place in it. His work fits with the view of photography that we use at the Stedelijk: artists who use photography as a medium to tell something about the world. And for example, Jeff Koons has another place in another art history.”

How does the Stedelijk tell the story of ‘the photographic artist Olaf’?

“Most people see him as the photographer of the staged high-gloss photos. We show little high-gloss and glamour, few supposed highlights either; we only hang them on the outside wall of the exhibition. We prefer to show the frayed edges of his work inside, the radical sides of it.

“Two years after his death, with more distance, we have been able to develop a different way of looking at his work. We can thus show the many aspects and stages of development, from his early journalistic work to the reflective April foolseries in the corona time – and also the connections between them. In addition, there is also the renewed topicality of the work, the emancipatory side, the social values, such as his activism for gay rights.”

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Interestingly, the Stedelijk is now receiving criticism again about this: the museum would show Olaf less because of the aesthetic aspects than because of the ethical aspects. Choreographer and photographer Hans van Manen, who often collaborated with Olaf, also points this out in the catalogue.

“One doesn’t exclude the other, does it? For much of the 20th century, art was seen as autonomous, but we now live in an era when the ethical aspects of a work of art can no longer be separated. So we do both. Freedom is about Olaf’s development as a photographer/artist, but also about his activism for gay rights and queer rights.”

In the accompanying catalogue, Erwin Olaf even seems to be assigned a new position: champion of freedom in a society in which those freedoms can no longer be taken for granted. In that sense, is the exhibition also intended as a political statement?

“This plays a role. The work has acquired a new relevance, due to the new intolerance that now prevails. When we look at the activist work of Erwin Olaf from the early days, we look at what we can use from it today. But at the same time we embed it in the time in which it originated, the 80s or 90s. And that also applies to the party world that Olaf photographed, in which lust and pleasure also play an important role. If you do that work with your eyes you can call it a rücksichtsloose, free view of things – and we also emphasize this kind of freedom with the design of the halls.”

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Olaf’s nude photography perhaps best demonstrates how older work can take on new meaning. A lot of work from the 90s and 2000s fit into a liberal context then, but now?

“Nude is now viewed differently in the museum world. There is often suspicion: wasn’t there an incorrect power relationship between the photographer and the model? But that was not the case with Olaf. There is an early photo in which Olaf photographs himself naked among all his muses, who are dressed accordingly. Because he asked them to pose naked for other photos, he wanted to do it himself. You see him constantly searching for freedom, including that of the models, and wants to show them who they are.

“In today’s culture there is more discomfort about nudity. There is now a puritanical layer on top. These nude photos make it clear to us that freedom was much more common in a time not so long behind us.”

The Rijksmuseum places Olaf in the tradition of the Dutch Old Masters, the Stedelijk makes him a defender of freedom. Doesn’t he suddenly become too big – isn’t he, as a celebrity, also a good crowd puller for the museum?

“We are no longer ‘too big’ here in the museum; we have abolished the icons – and we are not going to make Erwin Olaf an icon either. Yes, he was a celebrity, but that was made of him – it is not the intrinsic value of the work. The Stedelijk wants to take a critical look at that public personality, in order to show what the real importance of the work actually is.”

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