Alongside Johan van der Keuken, Ed van der Elsken, often called a “photographer of the margins,” occupies a singular place in twentieth-century documentary Dutch photography and cinema. In addition to his well-known images, the Galerie nationale Jeu de Paume features a collection of documents — contact sheets, sketches, layouts, letters, and notes — that shed fresh light on Elsken’s work and personality.
Dialogues: 36 Photographs & 20 Poems is a new publication from 205-A and the first book in a series that explores the intersection between photography and poetry. The publishers, Aaron Stern and Jordan Sullivan worked in collaboration with poets Tom Sleigh and Will Schutt to bring together these unique pairings. The book features the photography of Ed van der Elsken, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, Alain Laboile, Emma Phillips, Mark Borthwick, Brian Merriam, Coley Brown, Jordan Sullivan and Aaron Stern.
In photography, “the road trip,” especially by car around the United States, has been a right of passage for many photographers. Embarking on a fourteen-month world tour however is a bit less common, but that ambitious challenge was taken on in 1959 by the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken and his wife Gerda. The resulting photographs would turned into one of the most epic Dutch photobooks ever produced, The Sweet Life.
