Erwin Olaf's art visualizes implicitly the unspoken, the overlooked, that typically resist easy documentation. Olaf's trademark is to address social issues, taboos, and bourgeois conventions in a highly stylized and cunning mode of image making. With his razor-sharp aesthetic intuition, Olaf purposely conceals his themes, so that the viewer has to accept the initial concealment in Olaf's photo series. Yet in the end, his unconventional style never misses to deliver dramatic visual and emotional impact.By taking care of the scenic and lightning design, and the utmost perfect composition in his typical, immaculate 'Olafian' way, together with his passion for flawlessly conceiving scenarios, Olaf vividly captures the essence of contemporary life.
Read MoreMixing photojournalism with studio photography, 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. Deliberately disturbing and intended to raise awareness, Olaf committed himself in his earlier work on the subject of social exclusion in which he explored issues of class, race, sexual taste, beliefs, habits and grace. In his recent series Rain (2004), Hope (2005), Grief (2007) and Fall (2008) Olaf challenges the notion of domestic bliss. Dusk (2009) and Dawn (2010) show how culture can become repression, despite a beautiful appearance. A similar disengagement takes place in Olaf's Hotel (2010) series in which he explores the subtle range of detached melancholic emotions in dimly-lit exquisitely furnished 1950s hotel rooms.
Text courtesy Art Statements.
Related Press Solitary Anticipation 18 November 2019, Aesthetica Magazine That feeling of discomfort, awkwardness and uncomfortable expectation: Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf captures the very essence of waiting in his recent series Waiting (2014). Opening in October, Olaf's film and photographic installation is a 360-degree psychological experiment. The audience watches a woman waiting, mimicking their own role in an...
Related Press Dutch Artist Erwin Olaf's Polished Photos Celebrate Fantasy While Revealing Society's Ills, Part 2 25 September 2019, Forbes Born in 1959 in Hilversum in the Netherlands, Erwin Olaf studied journalism in Utrecht. News writing wasn't the right fit, so he was delighted when an insightful teacher proposed photography and put a camera in his hands. A photojournalist documenting the world around him at first, the domain of fantasy had always fascinated the perpetual dreamer...
Related Press Erwin Olaf: photography's Dutch master – in pictures 17 April 2019, The Guardian From nightlife-fuelled provocateur to Rembrandt-inspired portraitist, Erwin Olaf – 60 this year – continues to approach his subject with theatrical flair.
Related Press A Photographer Who Makes You Ask, ‘What Has Happened Here?’ 13 February 2019, The New York Times AMSTERDAM—If there’s a single work that encapsulates the artistry of Erwin Olaf, a leading Dutch photographer known for meticulously staged pictures that challenge social taboos and explore human frailty, it might be his 2005 portrait of a young woman in a yellow dress from the 'Hope' series. The brunette with a yellow ribbon in her hair seems...
