Achter glas

Joan van der Keuken
Achter glas

Photographs: Johan van der Keuken

Text: Remco Campert

Publisher: Hilversum de Boer

96 pages

Pictures: 84

Year: 1961

Comments: Softcover with glassine dust jacket, 305 x 245 mm. First paperback edition, 1961 after the hardback edition in 67. Gravure printing. Text in dutch. Reproductions very well preserved. Tiny tears along the spine and on dust jacket. Otherwise a solid and fresh copy! Included in The Photobook by Parr & Badger, vol.1, p. 244.

Johan Van der Keuken published his first photographs, in 1955 in a book entitled, We Are 17 and he rapidly turned his interest to cinema and music, always uniting his various passions. With his snapshots of everyday life, colorful or dark, blurry or graphic, the Dutch photographer considered photography as ‘his greatest love because it’s more private’. His images diffuse a clear sense of anxiety and enigma, no surprise his favorite film was Alfred Hitchock’s Vertigo. Johan Van der Keuken thus mastered his obsession: ‘If I cannot create images anymore, I’m dead.’