Seeking Refuge in Art and Imagination— The Legacy of Erwin Olaf
First and foremost, why Erwin Olaf?
Three reasons: the man, his work, and his time. I have known Erwin Olaf’s work from the beginning. He started out as quite controversial—his pictures were sometimes shocking, often with a sexual aspect. You were either intrigued by them or you hated them. He was a one-man avant-garde. I was intrigued.
And I saw how his work developed, and how his power of expression increased. He ended as a respected artist, exhibited in the best museums all over the world, and as the acclaimed photographer of the Dutch Royal Family. His work is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum and was shown alongside Rembrandt and other masters. After his death in 2023, the idea came up for a large retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the leading museum of modern art in the Netherlands. It was visited by a staggering 380,000 people. His work is very personal but always connected to the world around him. He was trained as a journalist and remained outspoken in his political views. He also stood for absolute freedom in those early years, the 1980s. In Amsterdam, you had the Roxy, our Dutch Studio 54, where anything was possible. He stood for liberation of the individual, especially the queer community, and in a time when those liberal values are under attack, I wanted to portray Erwin Olaf and his time.
I’d imagine both actively witnessing and writing a book about the life of someone else is not an easy feat. Can you tell me a little bit about what that process was like?
It was very special to witness someone like Erwin Olaf over the years. I followed him for years, went with him on trips to exhibitions in Munich and Paris, and watched many photographic sessions, like a fly on the wall. But I also spoke with his family, friends, gallery owners, curators, and colleagues like Rineke Dijkstra, who, together with Erwin, was part of a new wave in Dutch photography, although their work was very different.
There was a generation of Dutch photographers who contributed to making photography an art form: Erwin Olaf, Rineke Dijkstra, Inez & Vinoodh, and Dana Lixenberg. Of those photographers, Erwin Olaf and Inez & Vinoodh (who are now based in New York) moved furthest away from “reality,” and both also worked in commercial photography. Rineke Dijkstra became firmly established in the art world, while Dana Lixenberg perhaps remained closest to documentary photography.
In the process of writing and documenting Erwin Olaf’s life, do you think you guys had a creative exchange?
Yes, I think so. The book is of course my work, but over the years we became close, and in a way it was a form of cooperation. And Erwin Olaf was inspired by our project. He asked his models, mostly friends and people he met in the nightlife of the 1980s and 1990s, to come back to his studio and be portrayed again. In this series, Muses, you see a portrait of his generation. In a way, together they form a kind of self-portrait of Erwin.
His work explores themes of identity, loneliness, sexuality, power, and human vulnerability. I think that’s what has made it feel timeless, both during and after his passing. Do you think these themes were something he naturally embodied, or were they deliberately constructed in his work?
That’s difficult to answer. I think the themes you mention were exactly the ones that mattered most to Erwin Olaf. He had lived them, so to speak— he experienced them and transformed them into art. He struggled with accepting his homosexuality, and he also understood loneliness and the feeling of being an outsider through both his own life and observing others.
It came to him naturally in a way, but at the same time he thought deeply about the staging of his photographs and constructed his own world, his own reality, within his work. So it is not purely an intellectual exercise, but it is not entirely spontaneous either.
In the synopsis, you mention that Erwin found his muses in Amsterdam’s Club RoXY. Looking back, how important was that cultural moment in shaping not only Erwin’s career but also the broader artistic and queer communities he became part of?
It was a time of liberation, and Club RoXY was one of its symbols. For Erwin Olaf and many others, it was a refuge, especially for trans people who had nowhere else to go without being discriminated against, and for the queer community more broadly. Everything was mixed, and everything felt possible. It was also one of the first places where XTC and house music became very popular. Erwin was into XTC, though I think he preferred softer drugs.
What is something about Erwin Olaf that readers might not guess about him?
One thing is how much he valued craftsmanship in his art. After spending time working extensively with photoshop and digital image editing, he eventually returned to some of the earliest photographic techniques.
I’ve noticed a lot of young creatives are getting into photography and creative direction nowadays, which I think is great. What advice would you give to those entering the scene, and what do you think Erwin Olaf would advise as well?
Erwin preferred interns who didn’t come from fancy art schools, but from vocational education. In fact, after his untimely passing, the Erwin Olaf Foundation continues to support and help apprentices from those schools. So it is all about craftsmanship, combined with a very personal imagination. “If I want to see reality, I’ll look out the window” was one of his phrases.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from the book?
All of the above. In a time when all kinds of freedoms are being limited, homosexuality is increasingly rejected by some younger groups, the so-called “manosphere” is growing, and imagination is often overshadowed by weapons and war, you can still seek refuge in art and in imagination— and at the same time maintain a fighting spirit to defend the important social rights we cannot afford to lose.
