downloads
Press releases and press photographs
Press releases, in Dutch and in English, on current exhibitions and activities can be downloaded here in the form of a pdf.
High-resolution press photographs can be downloaded after a password has been obtained via: info@huismarseille.nl or tel. +31 (0)20 531 8980.
For more information on our exhibition program and other activities, please contact Wannes Ketelaars: +31 (0)20 531 8980, info@huismarseille.nl.
Chino Otsuka
9 June / 9 September, 2012
A World of Memories
The self-portrait genre is gaining ground in contemporary photography, and today’s globalised world seems to be giving rise to a new and urgent desire for a personal identity. For the Japanese-born, London-resident photographer Chino Otsuka, the quest for identity is the central theme in a notably autobiographical oeuvre. She approaches her way of ‘being’ through intriguing variations on her own self-depiction. But it is the context, in particular, within which she positions her own presence – or her absence – and the literally seamless ways in which she links the past and the present which make her oeuvre such a compelling ‘lieu de memoire’.
Guy Tillim
2 March / 3 June, 2012
Second Nature
The photographs that Guy Tillim made last year in French Polynesia and São Paulo bring these locations into sharp focus but are devoid of specific emphasis. The weather conditions on a misty Tahiti volcanic beach are depicted in extraordinary, almost palpable detail, but the image shows no traces of the usual idiom for depicting a tropical idyll. After all, this island exists in the Western imagination in terms of its remote, exotic location, dazzling beaches, azure waters, and dusky naked beauties. Guy Tillim, however, gives a new context to this landscape.
Naoya Hatakeyama
16 December / 26 February, 2012
Natural Stories
The stories told in Natural Stories – the retrospective of the work of the great Japanese photographer Naoya Hatakeyama – are about the relationships between humans and nature. Hatakeyama’s photographs do not tell stereotypical stories. He takes pictures not of plants or animals, but of stones and minerals, of the raw materials we exploit in order to give ourselves protection and warmth, of the nature we use in order to survive.
Siebe Swart
16 December / 26 February, 2012
Land of Air and Water
In a series of remarkable aerial photographs that are as detailed as they are abstract, Siebe Swart unravels every secret of the Dutch landscape. Dikes stretch out like straight lines across a bright green map or wind lazily through a spectrum of watery blues.
Scarlett Hooft Graafland
10 September / 20 November, 2011
Scarlett Hooft Graafland was trained as a sculptor; she creates temporary sculptures in rugged and desolate locations. The photographs that she takes of these installations are not intended as the documentation of that process: they are, in fact, the end result of each project.
Adam Fuss
11 June / 4 September, 2011
What immediately stands out with the work of Adam Fuss is that, both in terms of the chosen subject matter and in his approach to the photographic technique, he has greatly dissociated himself from conventional photography. That which Fuss produces is, in fact, still a photograph; but in order to achieve that, he did rid himself of all the finer luxuries available to users of the medium nowadays. Like a present-day alchemist, Fuss has mastered the medium's most elementary and primitive forms.
Marrigje de Maar & Bert Teunissen
4 March / 5 June, 2011
Marrigje de Maar: Red Roses, Yellow Rain
At Huis Marseille Marrigje de Maar will be presenting, for the first time, a retrospective of interiors that she photographed along China's borders: in its northern, southern and western regions and along the eastern coastline.
Bert Teunissen: Domestic Landscapes Travelogs
In the work of Bert Teunissen, whose series Domestic Landscapes was shown at Huis Marseille in 2006-2007 with great success, the focus lies with travel itself. While on the road for Domestic Landscapes, he shot black-and-white photographs of the changing landscape and encounters on the street from the window of his car.
Digital? Analogue!
27 November / 27 February, 2011
The distinguishing capacity of a master printer of photographs
For many years Peter Svenson worked as a printer at Amsterdam's professional photo lab S-color. In 2005 he and his colleague Gerrit Berghuis set up the Amsterdam Analogical Photoprinting-Lab, known as the AAP-Lab. This is where beautiful prints are produced for photographers such as Rineke Dijkstra, Sigudur Gudmundsson, Jacqueline Hassink, Marrigje de Maar, Rob Nypels, Liza May Post, Han Singels and others.
They have prints of their negatives made in the traditional manner, via chemical processes in which silver salts constitute an essential element, as in the chromogenic print, also known as the C-print.
Jacqueline Hassink, who lives in New York and works all over the world, comes to Amsterdam several times a year in order to print her photographs together with Peter Svenson. But also young conceptual artists such as Danielle van Ark, Melanie Bonajo, Popel Coumou, Dirk Kome, Katja Mater and Henk Wildschut manage to find their way to the AAP-Lab; there they are given the leeway to experiment and to explore the ultimate limits of photographic printing.
Dayanita Singh
4 September / 21 November, 2010
This fall Huis Marseille will be holding a retrospective exhibition of work by the Indian photographer Dayanita Singh (New Delhi, 1961). In 2008 she received an award from the Prince Claus Fund for her discerning view of life in India and for bringing new aesthetics to Indian photography. Singh is internationally recognized for the highly expressive and poetic quality of her photographs, whose incidence of light and visual construction are so meticulously composed that they result in a comment on society and her own past.
Summer Loves
5 June / 29 August, 2010
This exhibition is based on the idea of 'infatuations' that can affect both photographers and exhibition curators. People often suppose that museums make choices as objectively as possible, but actually this is far from from the truth. Just as an artist may feel physically and emotionally attracted to a particular subject, the collector or curator might also have a ‘crush’ on a certain work. The term ‘the infatuated camera’ comes from the title of a 1971 film by Ed van der Elsken, De Verliefde Camera, a compilation of travel clips previously filmed by him. This exhibition has been assembled in a similar way; photographs and film rushes from the present day contrast with excerpts and impressions from the previous century. Works have been seemingly casually arranged according to summery themes: hanging out, taking strolls, the intense experience of landscape, laid-back portraits in the park, or travel and being in transit.
First Light: Astronomy & Photography
6 March / 30 May, 2010
The exhibition First Light will be Huis Marseille's first large presentation on the relationship between photography and astronomy. Unusual historical photographs are to be combined with the most spectacular images from famous space telescopes and spacecraft.
Burtynsky / OIL
28 November / 28 February, 2010
With his exhibition and publication on oil, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky
has produced a masterpiece. On the basis of monumental and highly detailed color photographs about oil, its extraction and consumption, which Burtynsky has been making since 1997, he reveals the connection between our use of oil and the effect this has on the landscape. Within this context the relationship between the culture of oil consumption and the immense infrastructure that it requires is also firmly established. Ultimately Burtynsky's photographs of the waste left behind by this industry inspires us to imagine how the world might look when this fossil fuel is depleted.
Fazal Sheikh
5 September / 29 November, 2009
This fall Huis Marseille will be presenting, for the first time, a large retrospective on the work of American photographer Fazal Sheikh (New York, 1965). Sheikh is no stranger to the Netherlands. In his previous exhibitions held at the Nederlands Fotomuseum (1997, 2001) and during the photograhy festival Noorderlicht (1997), he showed his impressive portraits of homeless people and refugees in African and Asia. These exhibitions were the start of a substantial career. In monumental and tranquil black-and-white portraits, Sheikh gives names and faces to the people in refugee camps in Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan. He also records their stories in extensive statements. Fazal Sheikh now has well-developed body of work. The exhibition at Huis Marseille also includes his most recent series of photographs, taken in India: of women and children forced to survive under dire circumstances. This retrospective has been realized in close collaboration with the artist, curator Carlos Gollonet and Fondación MAPFRE in Madrid, which organized the tour.
Only Gaze a While Longer
30 May / 30 August, 2009
For several years now, photographer Rob Nypels has been living and working in the Auvergne, located in France's Massif Central. In these carefully chosen surroundings, his vision of landscape as a primarily personal domain arrived at the form and expression that he sought. His nature photographs of the Central Massif are images of intense beauty. They comprise not only reflections on the unusual quality of this landscape, but also on the state of affairs with respect to landscape photography. Together with Aap-lab's Peter Svenson, Nypels then expanded the limits of color photography in terms of printing technique. With this summer exhibition, photography museum Huis Marseille will be the first to give consideration to the new work of this photographer. The publication has been made possible by the H+F Collection. Both the exhibition and book bear the title Only Gaze A While Longer, taken from Tagebücher aus der Frühzeit (1899-1902) by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Taco Anema: Dutch Households
7 March / 24 May, 2009
Two new exhibitions dealing with the theme of family in photography will open at Huis Marseille this spring. Along with the unusual and extensive collection of daguerreotypes from the Enschedé family, which includes the oldest known photograph in the Netherlands, contemporary family portraits by the Amsterdam photographer Taco Anema will also be on display. A new portrait of the Enschedé family has been done by him as well. With his series Hollandse Huishoudens (Dutch Households) Anema shows just how removed today's family portrait is from the stately, occasionally rather forced-looking group portrait of the past, which has been handed down to us on small and intimate silver-plated copper plates. Anema's group portraits are scenes, or tableaux vivants. An informal, socially and sociologically inspired outlook lies at the heart of these. Furthermore, these large-scale color photographs are curiously reminiscent of the idiom in family portraits painted in the early part of the previous century. Taco Anema's households are indeed more 'tidy' and certainly less caricatural than what the Dutch refer to as 'Jan Steen households'. But they are also warmer and of a more casual atmosphere—more convivial and Dutch—than, for instance, the highly formalized family portraits by German photographer Thomas Struth. They convey less tension than the masterly but complex group portraits of Rineke Dijkstra. Not only does Anema's work show a strong stylistic development of the family portrait; his photographs reveal the extent to which the Dutch family is changing—and has changed.
"In the Full Light of Day"
7 March / 24 May, 2009
This spring Huis Marseille will proudly present a selection of roughly seventy daguerreotypes, photographic portraits of the distinguished Haarlem family of printers, the Enschedés. It is the first time that these portraits will be on view to the public. The daguerreotypes date from the period 1839 to 1856. Among the exhibited photographs is also the very first photograph to appear in the Netherlands. This is a daguerreotype taken from a pastel portrait of Johannes Enschedé and is dated September 1839, almost immediately following the announcement of the process on August 19 of that year. In connection with this special exhibition of early family portraits at Huis Marseille, a publication will be produced. Johan de Zoete, curator of the Museum Enschedé, has written a photographic history of the family, in which the origins and development of these daguerreotypes are documented in an outstanding manner. Saskia Asser, curator of Huis Marseille, places the Dutch practice of daguerreotypy in an international perspective. Herman Maes, conservator of photographs at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, provides an account of recent conservation work on this collection. The exhibition has been realized in close collaboration with the staff and board of Museum Enschedé. On view concurrently with this presentation of old family portraits at Huis Marseille is Dutch Households, comprising the contemporary and topical family portraits of photographer Taco Anema.
Cy Twombly – Photographs 1951-2007
6 September / 23 November, 2008
This fall Huis Marseille will be showing the photographic work of the famous American artist Cy Twombly. It has already been a few decades ago that Twombly's work was last exhibited in the Netherlands. One of those occasions was La Grande Parade, the farewell exhibition of Edy de Wilde, held at the Stedelijk Museum in 1984. By now Cy Twombly has become painting's éminence grise. In celebration of his eightieth birthday, various exhibitions are paying tribute to him this year. Among them is a large retrospective of his paintings and sculptures at the Tate Modern in London (Cycles and Seasons, through 15.09.08).
Hans Scholten: Urban Future #2
31 May / 31 August, 2008
The future of the city: that is the theme raised by Amsterdam artist Hans Scholten (1952) in his photographic project Urban Future. For a number of years now, he has been photographing the urban landscapes of huge cities in Asia and the Middle East. There he captures scenes of rapidly growing neighborhoods, in which chaos and anarchy seem to arise due to a lack of organized city planning. Scholten concerns himself specifically with the way in which the inhabitants themselves shape and set up these neighborhoods: how political, cultural and economic developments determine the outward appearance of these cities. He points out differences and similarities, particularly in the uncontrolled pace of construction and the surprising swiftness with which decay sets in at the same time. Is this the future that awaits cities in the Western world as well?
Edwin Zwakman: Fake but Accurate
1 March / 25 May, 2008
This spring Huis Marseille will be presenting a large retrospective on the well-known Dutch artist and photographer Edwin Zwakman (1969). His most recent series of photographs will now be shown in its entirety for the first time. The exhibition also includes a selection from his sketchbooks, which play a crucial role in the development of his projects and have a powerful expressiveness of their own. In addition to this, consideration is being given to the projects that Zwakman carries out on location and which were pivotal to the exhibition Iconic Target, held at the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen.
Jacqueline Hassink: The Power Show
1 December / 24 February, 2008
This winter Huis Marseille and the Nederlands Fotomuseum are collaborating in simultaneously presenting The Power Show by the Dutch artist Jacqueline Hassink, including her latest photographic projects which are being shown for the first time in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Huis Marseille is exhibiting the series Arab Domains, Haute Couture Fitting Rooms, Paris ,View, Kyoto and BMW Car Girls while the Nederlands Fotomuseum is presenting an installation of Car Girls and her famous earlier series, The Table of Power, in its entirety. Although these projects differ in subject matter and form, they fall under the same theme: Hassink’s investigation into the spaces where power is wielded. Being published in conjunction with the exhibition is The Power Book, Jacqueline Hassink’s first monograph that includes all of the artist’s photographic projects to date.
Valérie Belin
1 September / 25 November, 2007
Huis Marseille is presenting its first major survey of the work of French photographer Valérie Belin (Boulogne-Billancourt 1964). Belin has already exhibited at Huis Marseille in the group exhibition Oublier l’exposition, Contemporary Photography from France (2001), where her monumental portraits of bodybuilders and Moroccan brides drew attention. Over the past seventeen years she has worked on an oeuvre comprising some 20 series of still-lifes and portraits. Most of these were photographed in strong and highly contrasting black and white, but her latest work is in colour.
Cristóbal Hara: An Imaginary Spaniard / Han Singels: Polder Holland
2 June / 26 August, 2007
Spain versus Holland: with the photographs of Cristóbal Hara and Han Singels, Huis Marseille is bringing Southern temperament and Northern light under its roof this summer. Cristóbal Hara has worked for over thirty years on a personally tinged oeuvre in which he fuses Spain’s cultural and religious traditions and political history with his own past and memories. Han Singels, following the lead of the classical school of Dutch painting, photographs Dutch landscapes in which cows play the leading role. Both photographers began as photojournalists, but ended up choosing another direction for reasons of their own. With the photographs they are now showing in Huis Marseille, they each find themselves in alignment with the broad artistic traditions of their own countries: the expressive emotional surrealism of Hara against the subdued and cerebral realism of Singels.
David Goldblatt: Intersections
10 March / 27 May, 2007
‘Intersections’ is the term used by the South African photographer David Goldblatt for the crosscurrents of values, ideas, standpoints, spaces and people that comprise South African society. Goldblatt (b. Randfontein, 1930) is the éminence grise of South African photography, known for his subtle and sharp take on life in South Africa. With the exhibition Intersections, Huis Marseille is the first to present a large survey of Goldblatt’s new colour photography in the Netherlands.
Bert Teunissen: Domestic Landscapes (1995-2005)
2 December / 4 March, 2007
Over the past ten years Bert Teunissen (Ruurlo, 1959) has produced more than 250 photographs for his long-term photo project Domestic Landscapes. A broad selection of these will be shown at Huis Marseille this winter. In various European countries Teunissen sought interiors of houses in which daylight still determined the arrangement of furniture, the atmosphere and the daily life of the inhabitants. Such houses were built long before World War II, before electricity began to influence the rhythm of life. In the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and Italy Teunissen photographed people who have continued to live in this authentic manner. By doing this he also documented a way of life that is rapidly vanishing under the pressure of ongoing modernization and stringent EU regulations.
Hellen van Meene: New Work
1 September / 26 November, 2006
This autumn Huis Marseille is presenting an overview of the latest work of Hellen van Meene. Over the past four years Hellen van Meene (Alkmaar, the Netherlands, 1972) has travelled across the world to make a beautiful and convincing sequel to her series of portraits of teenagers, which brought her worldwide success around the turn of this century. Having at first worked mainly with teenagers whom she already knew from her own surroundings, she found her models for her new work on the streets of Japan, England, Germany, Letland and Russia. These portraits were likewise carefully staged, although she worked more quickly and purposefully. This spontaneous manner of photographing has led to new portrait photos in which the interaction between photographer and model is much more charged – for the first time, there is direct eye contact between model and photographer.
The Summer Collection
3 June / 27 August, 2006
This summer, visitors to Huis Marseille will have the opportunity of experiencing the contrasts and similarities between film and photography on the basis of works selected from the Huis Marseille collection and the H+F Collection (Runa Islam, Jörg Sasse), supplemented by several works on loan. The central focus is the artist’s search for the best technique possible. Although consumers are switching over in droves to digital, the choice between analogue and digital is not a self-evident one for many artists, photographers and filmmakers. The difference in quality remains a matter of debate: although pixel density increases with digital, the difference with old techniques is far from definitive. Runa Islam, Beate Gütschow, Jörg Sasse and Vik Muniz are led in their choices by the artistic possibilities of the medium to such an extent that the underlying technique – however complex – is essential to the expressive power of their intended images. And for the lesser-known young filmmakers who will be showing their short films on the open stage in the courtyard as well, the choice of technique (film, high-definition, dv, etc.) is what determines the expressiveness of their work. (Although they go less far in this respect.) In the discussion that Huis Marseille is organizing in relation to this exhibition at the end of June, prominent photographers and filmmakers will speak about their artistic and technical dilemmas.
Whisper Not! A Different Dimension of Seeing: Huis Marseille / H+F Collection
4 March / 28 May, 2006
The exhibition Whisper Not! throws the spotlights on a special collaboration between Huis Marseille and the collector Han Nefkens. First announced last autumn with the presentation the Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi, this collaboration has now gained a broader dimension. Han Nefkens has been collecting contemporary art and placing it in the H+F Collection since 1999. One of the basic principles of this collection is that it is a ‘public’ collection. Nefkens expressly collects art with the aim of sharing his selections with a broader public. The photographs shown in Whisper Not! were acquired by the H+F Collection in close consultation with Huis Marseille, where they are on permanent loan as a 'promised gift'.
Isidore van Kinsbergen (1821-1905) Photo Pioneer and Theatre Maker in the Dutch East Indies
10 December / 26 February, 2006
Isidore van Kingsbergen is sometimes described as the “sleeping beauty” of nineteenth-century photography. While he already acquired great fame during his lifetime and was recognised internationally, there has never been a large retrospective devoted to his body of work. Yet Van Kinsbergen was a flamboyant artist who appealed to the imagination and who put his experience as a theatre maker to full use in his photography. This exhibition draws together some 140 photographs, albums and other objects from various national and international collections. For the first time, these give an overall impression of the exceptional qualities of this photo pioneer. Van Kinsbergen’s contacts in the highest government circles of the Dutch East Indies provided him with exceptional photographic commissions. Due to his tireless efforts for new cultural projects, he has also been described as the “soul” of colonial artistic life in Batavia.
Autumn 2005: Rinko Kawauchi, Marijke van Warmerdam, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba a.o.
10 September / 4 December, 2005
With its exhibition of work by the Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi, Huis Marseille is introducing a series of presentations of highly promising photographers and artists who have demonstrated great visual potential. This series of large and small presentations will consist of various clusters of photographs or projections that map the development of the artists up till now. Museological collecting is the tenor of these exhibitions, which are based on a special collaboration with the collector Han Nefkens, who since 2000 has assembled an extensive array of contemporary art entitled H + F Collection, a substantial portion of which is on structural loan to institutions such as the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, the De Pont Museum for Contemporary Art and the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. In the coming period, Huis Marseille and H + F Collection will acquire art works together, with H + F Collection buying the works and presenting them to Huis Marseille on permanent loan. Huis Marseille has also invited Han Nefkens to guest curate an exhibition in March 2006 showing the first substantial results of this unique collaboration between a museum and a private collector (including the work of Uta Barth, Syoin Kajii and Frank van der Salm among others). This fall’s exhibition of the young Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi presents her work for the first time in the Netherlands and gives a taste of what will be added to Huis Marseille’s collection in the coming period. It promises to be a special and exciting time.
The Passion of the Private Collector
4 June / 4 September, 2005
Huis Marseille presents the collections of Josje Janse-de Ronde Bresser and Hans van den Bogaard
Josje Janse-de Ronde Bresser and Hans van den Bogaard each quietly acquired an extraordinary collection of photographs over the years, which was only seen by a small group of family members, friends and photography buffs. Now these photographs are temporarily leaving closets, drawers, boxes and frames in the privacy of their homes for the public space of walls and display cases in Huis Marseille. At Huis Marseille’s request, they themselves made the selections. With this exhibition, we look at the history of photography through their eyes. At the same time, we get a unique glimpse into the obsession and passion of the photography collector.
Made in Britain
5 March / 29 May, 2005
Antoni + Alison, Craig Ames, Christopher Bucklow, Susan Derges, Elaine Constantine, Matthew Murray, Chino Otsuka, Michelle Sank, Nigel Shafran, Clare Strand, David Trainer, Naglaa Walker
In the exhibition Made in Britain, Huis Marseille presents the work of 12 contemporary British photographers, most of whom are exhibiting in the Netherlands for the first time. These 12 photographers represent an equivalent number of positions in their own country, albeit very different ones. Moreover, Great Britain itself plays a part in the thematic content of their work. Beyond nationality these photographers appear at first sight to have little in common as artists. The quality of their work is the strongest connecting factor.