Erwin Olaf

MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Erwin Olaf Vermeer Noir” might be an apt description of Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf’s disquieting image repertoire. His subjects are posed indoors, immobile, somewhat in reverie and bathed in nearby window light--but not
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APERTURE
ISBN: 9781597110617
$65.00 | Awaiting stock

Erwin Olaf: Own Edited by Erwin Olaf, Christoph Ruys. Text by Javier Panera, Natacha Wolinski. Mixing photojournalism with highly stylized studio photography, Erwin Olaf emerged on the international art scene in 1988, when his series Chessmen was awarded the first prize in the Young European Photographer
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LIDO
ISBN: 9789491301445
$75.00 | In stock

Erwin Olaf: Silver Essays by William Elia, Jonathan Turner and Ruud Schenk. Foreword by Kees van Twist. Erwin Olaf, one of the best know and most over-the-top Dutch photographers of today--think David LaChapelle crossed with Playboy)--lives a passionate, lusty affair with life, enjoying it to the fullest extent,
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LUDION
ISBN: 9789076588636
$65.00 | Not available

Erwin Olaf

Erwin Olaf: Own

Works 1984-2012

Edited by Erwin Olaf, Christoph Ruys. Text by Javier Panera, Natacha Wolinski.
Published by Lido

Mixing photojournalism with highly stylized studio photography, Erwin Olaf emerged on the international art scene in 1988, when his series Chessmen was awarded the first prize in the Young European Photographer competition. This award was followed by an exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, in the same year. From early on, Olaf committed himself to uneasy issues of class, race, sex and religious belief. Noirish and steeped in 1950s Americana, his style has been embraced by the advertising world, leading to worldwide campaigns for Diesel Jeans and Heineken (which won him the coveted Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival for Advertising). Outside of his commercial work, in recent series such as Rain (2004), Hope (2005), Grief (2007) and Fall (2008), Olaf subverts ideals of domestic bliss, while Dusk (2009) and Dawn (2010) show how culture can become repression. A similar disengagement takes place in the Hotel series (2010), in which he explores a range of melancholic emotions in dimly lit, exquisitely furnished 1950s hotel rooms. Alongside new and unpublished work, this book-now in its second printing-shows an overview of all the personal (non-commercial) work that Olaf has made over the past 25 years. It includes essays by Natacha Wolinski and Christoph Ruys and an interview with the photographer.
Erwin Olaf was born in the Netherlands in 1959. His work in photography, fashion and film has won him numerous awards and commissions. In 2010 Louis Vuitton commissioned Olaf for a portrait series in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. He also won numerous other international art and media prizes, such as Photographer of the Year in the International Color Awards in 2006, and Kunstbeeld magazine's Artist of the Year of the Netherlands in 2007. Among his recent monographs are Erwin Olaf (Aperture) and Vite Private (Contrasto).

Erwin Olaf

Published by Aperture

“Vermeer Noir” might be an apt description of Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf’s disquieting image repertoire. His subjects are posed indoors, immobile, somewhat in reverie and bathed in nearby window light--but not tranquilly so. An atmosphere of sinister but clinical indifference attends both them and their environments, rendering them into beautiful but dislocated mannequins in catalogue-furnished interiors. All sense of belonging to a place is eliminated. Each richly colored and sleekly composed image offers a sly reinterpretation of Norman Rockwell-like iconography and characters, manifesting a nostalgia that both burlesques and celebrates America of the 1950s and 60s. Dramatic emotions are hinted at but left ambiguous; certainly nothing in the models’ surroundings suggests a cause. Here, across three themes of Hope, Grief and Rain, Olaf blends mid-century Modern and Noir in the lens of contemporary fashion. Avocado greens, golden-hued oranges and subtle lilacs brighten and deaden simultaneously, sending an irresolvable tension through his scenarios like an electric current. This tension, strung between the polar effects of zing and muteness, is the line Olaf treads in his pictures. As a whole, the work defines what critic Jonathan Turner usefully describes as “Olaf’s recent fascination with the visual representation of such emotions as loss, loneliness and quiet despair... [He] plays games with the idea of cold reality versus cruel artifice, capturing that precise moment when innocence, hope and joy are lost.” The book comes with a DVD.

Erwin Olaf: Silver

Essays by William Elia, Jonathan Turner and Ruud Schenk. Foreword by Kees van Twist.
Published by Ludion

Erwin Olaf, one of the best know and most over-the-top Dutch photographers of today--think David LaChapelle crossed with Playboy)--lives a passionate, lusty affair with life, enjoying it to the fullest extent, a true gastronome of the art of living. His oeuvre stands as a manifestation of this very passion and of his very genuine engagement with his subjects. Over the last 25 years, he has evolved from a photographer who captures reality to a director who creates it; either way, the depicted reality is one filled with humor, imagination, sexuality, and exuberance, raising issues of freedom, beauty, loneliness, and difference. A master who can generate his own, perverse world through autonomous photographic series, grandiose parties, and film projects alike, he is also hypercritical, an artist from whom nothing escapes. Thus his fictions are convincing, his images full of bygone days, fairytales, and dreams, populated by historical figures, elves, dwarves, lunatics, and creatures that defy easy description.