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• Issue #271
• Article

By Michael Diemar

(Credit : Rijksmuseum/Kelly Schenk)

The recently opened exhibition "American Photography" is the latest in the long line of impressive photography exhibitions curated by Hans Rooseboom and Mattie Boom at Rijksmuseum. It has been years in the making and in this interview, they talk about the exhibition and how the photography collection at Rijksmuseum has grown over the years.

This is the first-ever comprehensive survey of American Photography in Europe in recent times. That’s quite extraordinary. Do you have any theories as to why no other European museum has taken it on before?

HR: As far as we knew no European museum had yet organized a large-scale exhibition on American photography and that made it an even more tempting idea. As American photography has been very influential since 1945--as in the fields of economy, politics, military, entertainment, science and the arts, it made sense for us to focus on American photography when we were finally and officially allowed to go into the 20th century in 2005. This exhibition is the outcome of some 20 years of collecting American photography.

As I understand it, American photography has been your main focus in the acquisition program in recent years. To some, this would seem a bit strange. Why did you decide to go down that road?

MB: Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam already collected 20th-century photography. In 1989 it was agreed upon that the Rijksmuseum would start collecting international photography of the 19th century, focusing on photography from France because that was the leading country by then. The Rijksmuseum itself turned out to be a real treasure trove. After doing an inventory of the photographs already present in the Rijksmuseum library, in the attics and basements, we effectively started collecting and buying photography in 1994. With the planning of the New Rijksmuseum in 2005, the lay-out of the museum changed: the visitor should be able to walk through the centuries, from the Middle Ages on to 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries with the objects completely mixed. That meant we could finally go into the 20th century as well! Our collecting focus now became American Photography, as a leading force in photography of the 20th century, substantially supported by the Baker McKenzie firm, which enabled us to acquire many serious works. In the meantime, the collection of American Photography grew and now adds up to 7,000 photographs and 1,500 photo books: old and new, and from all three centuries.

When did you first get the idea for the exhibition? Did the acquisitions come first and then the idea for the exhibition?

HR: The acquisitions came first. When we started collecting 20th-century photography in 2005, after having limited ourselves to the 19th century at first, the museum was still closed for renovation. When it re-opened in 2013, the part that had been open during that 10-year period also had to be renovated. It was then turned into the exhibition wing, which opened in 2014 with "Modern Times", an overview of our collection of 20th-century photography. Soon after that exhibition closed, we started working on an exhibition on our 19th-century photographs, "New Realities", which opened in 2017. Immediately after that, we started thinking about what could be next. American photography was the logical answer.

Conceptually, it strikes me as a big thing to take on. In the early phase, how did you map it out? What subjects or works did it have to include?

MB: A big thing it may be, but in the first place, a tempting adventure. There was a lot of research and thinking and rethinking to be done, photographs to be seen, and in the end, picking the most amazing images, whether high or low. There were only a few restrictions: the photographs had to be made on American soil, by American photographers. We started with a PowerPoint of 1,600 images, things we thought would fit in with the selected themes. And we wanted to see the objects for ourselves, in New York, Washington, Boston, St Louis, Kansas City etc. Were they good enough to stand out? We had to kill many of our darlings and trimmed this list down and down, and ended up with a little more than 200 images or objects.

Hans working on the installation. (Credit : Rijksmuseum/Kelly Schenk)

Did the nature of the exhibition evolve as you went along?

HR: Given the enormous wealth of photographs made since 1839 and knowing we would be visiting many American institutions with huge collections, we knew we had to establish the themes right away. When you visit, for instance, the Library of Congress with its millions of photographs, it is no use to simply go there and see what they may have. You have to make a selection beforehand. If you didn’t know what themes the items should serve, you would get lost and overwhelmed. Knowing the themes of the rooms beforehand enabled us to decide each time if a certain photograph would really add to that theme or would not fit in. As every room has space for a limited number of photographs, we have ended up with a strong mix that really expresses the developments within that field.

How the exhibition is mapped out? Is it organized chronologically?

MB: No, we wanted to do it thematically, so each room has photographs from the early days of the medium, from the 20th century as well as approaches from our own day and time So it is a mix of photographs from all three centuries which in itself is fascinating: to be able to see and compare works from 1840, with those from 1938, 1995 or 2005.

What are the specific themes? And beyond the specific themes, are there overhanging themes?

HR: Most rooms are devoted to a specific theme: portraiture (including certain social issues), privately used objects, advertising, landscape, the arts. All of this preceded by two introductory rooms that give a hint of what will come next.

Some would expect an exhibition about American photography to be about photographs of America. It’s not quite the same thing. How have you tackled this?

MB: Photography as practiced in the United States is of course at the core of the exhibition. How did it develop? What were strong currents? How can we show the different starting points of the photographers and their many, many diverse backgrounds? Why did it spread so fast in the Western world; it almost immediately became THE universal language from day one. Because of the rise of an independent USA in the late 18th-century and the rise of photography are almost parallel stories and histories, both are indeed completely intertwined. Photography was the image culture of America, similar to Amsterdam in the 17th century, with painting and printmaking. Photography was sort of natural ally to the development of the US in modern times: a perfect and very influential companion.

Can you tell me about the works in the exhibition?

HR: The exhibition of course includes some works by famous photographers like Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, William Klein, and Nan Goldin, but we have always liked to give a variety of known and unknown images by sometimes very underrated or overlooked photographers. After all, we have always been interested in how photography functioned, found its way to an audience, how it was used (or abused) to make a certain point or serve a certain agenda. We did the same in "Modern Times" and "New Realities" and we think that really worked well.

(Credit : Rijksmuseum/Olivier Middendorp)

How many of the works come from the Rijksmuseum collection?

MB: Around 60 % come from the Rijksmuseum photo collection and 40% are loans, not only from the US, but also from our neighbor the Stedelijk Museum, the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the National Archives in the Hague, and the Dutch King’s Royal archives in the Hague.

HR: The loans from the states came from MoMA, Nelson-Atkins, the National Gallery of Art and the National Museum of American History in Washington, SFMoMA, George Eastman House in Rochester, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Art Institute Chicago, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The New York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the Bancroft and Stanford Libraries, the Gorman Museum at the University of Davis, and the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis alos contributed. And then some private collectors contributed to the show.

MB: One of the highlights is a Mammoth album with a cover of Sequoia wood, gold tips and quartz, with images of California, containing mammoth photographs by Watkins, Houseworth and Charles Leander Weed. It’s almost too big to handle. It was a precious gift, made in 1874 to the Dutch King William III from a group of Dutch citizens, mostly bankers and businessmen. We now know the price tag was 750 US dollars at the time.

Were there works you would have liked to include but that were unavailable as loans?

MB: Only a few, due to temporarily close downs of these institutions, including the California Historical Society in San Francisco, where we saw truly amazing things.

Hans Rooseboom: "If you come across unknown images, you are on your own; you have to rely on your own taste, intuition and knowledge...You have to be daring." (Credit: Rijksmuseum/Maarten Kools)

When I received the press release for the exhibition last year, and saw some of the images, I thought, "This is a Rijksmuseum exhibition", because I think it reflects your acquisition policy. While you have acquired masterpieces by the leading names over the years, you have also acquired works at very modest prices, in some cases by unknown photographers, all wonderful images. Can you tell me a little about this?

HR: We entered the field relatively late and were asked to focus on the 19th century. Because of that, and because we do not have the deepest pockets, we had to find other ways of acquiring great stuff. No way we would be able to buy, for instance, two dozen Walker Evans vintage prints or by any other famous photographer. Luckily, you can still find strong and intriguing images. British art historian Francis Haskell once wrote, "It requires far greater judgment to buy cheap than expensive pictures." He was referring to paintings, but the same applies to photographs. If you would only buy known images by acknowledged masters of the medium, no one will doubt your choices or taste, but if you come across unknown images you are on your own; you have to rely on your own taste, intuition and knowledge, as the importance of those images is not confirmed by books, exhibitions, or their presence in important collections. You have to be daring.

Alongside American Photography, you are showing another exhibition, Carrie Mae Weems: Painting the Town. Why this particular exhibition?

MB: In 2021, in the aftermath of the violent death of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter Movement for months demonstrated everywhere in the US. In her hometown Portland, OR, Carrie Mae Weems saw what happened and--so typically of her--reinterpreted the history and fate of Black Lives, which had for centuries now been wiped out, neglected, forgotten: their words literally covered up. She hit back by making huge monumental photographs--like abstract paintings--of the way the authorities literally covered up, painted over the words and outcries that demonstrators wrote on walls and boarded-up shop fronts in which they spoke out their anguish, their worries, and anger about their fate, and still are not heard.

I'd like to take you back a bit. You took up your posts in 1993. A year later, the national collections of photography were gathered at the Rijksmuseum. What were those collections?

HR: in the mid-1980s the Dutch State bought two private collections--those by Amsterdam lawyer Bert Hartkamp and photographer Willem Diepraam. It added some other collections to it, had them catalogued by a team of art historians led by Mattie, and then decided to transfer them to the Rijksmuseum in early 1994, together with the donation of the Eduard Isaac Asser photographs by his descendants, Asser having done the earliest Dutch photographs, in the early 1840s and 1850s. That was the starting point for the Rijksmuseum’s print room to start collecting photography alongside prints, which it had collected since around 1800, and drawings, collected since the 1870s. The museum’s History Department had already started collecting photographs in the mid-1970s, but focused on Dutch documentary photography, including photographs from the former colonies and photographs of big 19th-century infrastructural works, like the building of bridges, railways, dams, and sluices. We took it from there.

Mattie Boom: "I see the photo collection as a house with many rooms..." (Credit: Rijksmuseum/Maarten Kools)

With the national collections in place, what did you set out to collect?

MB: I see the photo collection as a house with many rooms i.e. specialized fields which you adjust and amplify all the time, often more by coincidence than strategy. As I said French photography became very important for the development of medium in the 19th century. But in general, there are no strict borders where photography is concerned. A good photograph is a good photograph. Luckily photography was and is a universal language. We acquired many more Dutch photographers naturally: among them Veldhoen’s painted Polaroids from the 1960s to the 1980s, and by donation, two monumental overpainted Polaroids by Dutch painter Karel Appel. In the depot we keep the photographs sorted by country and from A to Z. That is more practical if students and researchers want to see them in the study room. Hans found interesting new tintypes and cyanotypes and we now have the largest collection of autochromes in the Netherlands. Photobooks from 19th and 20th century were important. We have a library with around 20,000 photo books and magazines which is also sort of a laboratory for further research and directions, and a big inspiration. The public can join in and find 200,000 photographs online on the Rijksmuseum website.

As I recall, "A New Art. Photography in the 19th Century", in 1996, was your first major exhibition at the museum. Can you tell me a little about it and the ones that followed?

HR: "A New Art" was a first foretaste of the photography collection that had just entered the museum two years before, in 1994. It drew from the Hartkamp and Diepraam collections but also included pictures we had acquired in the first two, three years of collecting. It may have come as a surprise to many people that the Rijksmuseum had entered the field of photography. As quite a few other Dutch institutions had already done so for a long time, we had to find our own place among our colleagues. International photography happened to be ‘vacant’, especially from the 19th century. We made some other exhibitions until the museum closed down for renovation: a monographic exhibition on early Dutch amateur photographer Eduard Isaac Asser, curated by Mattie), one on travel photography, and one from the collections of Manfred Heiting, who then still lived part of the year in Amsterdam.

In 2005, the museum acquired the remaining part of Willem Diepraam and Shamanee Kempadoo's collection of 20th-century photography in 2005. Can you tell me a little about that acquisition?

(Credit : Rijksmuseum/Kelly Schenk)

MB: This collection of 20th-century photographs contained works by Bill Brandt, Gerard Fieret, Eva Besnyö, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Ed van der Elsken, André Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Brassaï, Renger Patzsch, and so many more. It formed a perfect starting point. Since then, we have been building the collection of 20th century photography. Now we have some near complete oeuvres of Dutch photographers, as Van der Elsken, Sanne Sannes, Willem Diepraam himself, Vincent Mentzel, Erwin Olaf, and our world-wide famous ballet master Hans van Manen, who donated us his own photographs and those of his friend Robert Mapplethorpe, who started his European career in the late 1970s in Amsterdam, and in that way the collection has grown. A lot of people supported us so generously that we have been making wonderful progress. I myself researched the rise of amateur photography in the Netherlands in "Everyone a photographer" (2019) because I wanted to know more about the early beginnings of the amateur in photography and also wanted to find out who the main protagonists were. As it turned out: these were young rich urbanites interested in new technology. In fact, the Single Lens Reflex Camera, which became the camera of the 20th century, was an Amsterdam invention brought about in 1889 by 18-year-old Bram Loman. For these youngsters, new bikes and cameras were the thing! It also helped we had some fine oeuvres by the Dutch "peintre-photographes" in our collection: Breitner, Jessurun and Witsen talents and amateur photographers in their own right. And the amazing photocollage albums by Amsterdam photographer Eva Pennink (from the1930s, 40s and 50s) completed these sets.

What are the other significant acquisitions, and donations, since then?

HR: Most importantly, we recently bought two large private collections in very specific fields. First, in 2022, the large collection of 19th-century advertising and product photography from Steven F. Joseph, a Brussels-based collector from whom we already had been buying a large body of photographically illustrated books from the 19th century. After he sold that collection to us in 2001, he started collecting early "photographie publicitaire", and that collection we acquired in 2022. A year later Bart Sorgedrager’s beautiful collection of 20th-century ‘factory photo books’ followed, another field that is still new and exciting and very much worth exploring. As we ourselves divide our attention over many different aspects of the history of photography, we are unable to devote all time and money to just one specific subfield. That is why private collections like these two are crucial.

You received the AIPAD Award in 2023, well deserved for all the fine exhibitions and books you have produced. Looking back over the 30 plus years at Rijksmuseum, what were the particular milestones in your exhibition program?

MB: I think we already mentioned them all! "A New Art. Photography in the 19th Century" (1996); "Modern Times" (2014); "New Realities" (2017) and now "American Photography" (2025). In the Photo gallery we made some remarkable ones: "Seascapes and New Horizons" with contemporary photography and "Stop Motion" combining Muybridge and Marey negatives, which were donated to us three years ago.

You have worked together for a long time. What makes your collaboration work?

HR: That is hard to say, but I guess it helped we have roughly the same idea of what to collect as a museum, what sides of photography we like best or think most important. For instance, we are not just interested in the fine art side of photography, but we both want to know, and be able to show, how photography functioned. It may be like in being a marriage or in a friendship. Maybe it is about trusting each other and finding a solution when we disagree among ourselves?

Do you have to agree on all acquisitions?

MB: Yes, of course. At fairs we have to act quickly and make fast decisions before things evaporate before our eyes. It helps that we have the same interests and are not afraid of outside-the-box thinking. We like to avoid the established names and canon, and are always on the lookout for surprises: things we have never seen before. It helps when you have big projects on hand such as "American Photography". Then it is even goes quicker because you immediately know: "Here is a match: a place for this item in the exhibition.

What are the next projects for you, big and small?

HR: The next big exhibition will be held in the summer of 2026 on Ed van der Elsken, whose archive we acquired in 2019. As Mattie and I would still be working on "American Photography" until just a year before that show and the book on Ed van der Elsken should be finished, it was impossible for us to take care of that project in a serious enough way. That is why we hired Hinde Haest, a much younger curator. So far, she has been doing a great job; moreover, she has recently succeeded Mattie, who will retire after the "American Photography" project. Apart from that big show and book, Hinde and I are right now thinking of a new series of smaller exhibitions in our Baker McKenzie photo gallery.

Michael Diemar is a London-based collector and consultant. He is also editor-in-chief of The Classic, a new free magazine about classic photography. He is a long-time writer about the photography scene, writing extensively for several Scandinavian photography publications, as well as for the E-Photo Newsletter and I Photo Central.