For Canadian micro-sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982), life and theatre coincided. People play roles, present themselves as personas, engage in impression management, and behave differently backstage (private life) than frontstage (audience). We highly recommend his book, The Dramaturgy of Everyday Life.
In fact, photographer Leo van Velzen himself longed to "bow down" after a theatre or dance performance. As a man with a great love for theatre and dance—and especially for the actors, actresses, and dancers—he was able to empathize with the people he portrayed so much that he became an actor or dancer himself. Anyone who sees his dazzling photos—full of intense zest for life, or rather, zest for life—will not be surprised that he was adored by those same actors and dancers, who bowed after a performance to thank the audience.
Rumour has it that Van Velzen, praised for his modesty—although the legendary psychiatrist Louis Tas believed that only false modesty exists—was once summoned to the stage by Conny Janssen as a token of gratitude for his love and dedication to the world of dance. At least, that's what his "dearest and oldest" friend and fellow photographer Vincent Mentzel claims. Whether or not it happened that way is irrelevant—it must have been a blissful moment for this modest grandmaster.
Because a grandmaster is what Leo van Velzen is.
Van Velzen's portraits are first and foremost declarations of love, his landscapes sacred ground, his (black-and-white!) sunflowers amorphous beings. Here, an impassioned (sometimes even called romantic) photographer kisses his material—people, nature, architecture, sea, and sky.
All his work speaks of a love for humanity and for life.
It took a long time for photography to be definitively accepted into the realm of "fine art." Photography itself has existed for almost 200 years, but it wasn't until 1940 that a "Department of Photography" was established at the renowned MoMA in New York. For a long time, photography was seen as commissioned work (newspapers, fashion magazines) and also in circulation, and therefore didn't receive papal approval from the art world. It wasn't until the 1970s that photography was definitively embraced. Ed van der Elsken and the American WeeGee were pioneers: their work quickly found its way into the art world.
According to Vincent Mentzel, Peter Martens was repeatedly rejected for the Visual Arts scheme until Jan Riezenkamp (Rotterdam's alderman for Finance and Arts Affairs from 1974 to 1978) arrived on the scene: he decreed that photography was art, period. And so it was.
It is therefore particularly gratifying that Leo van Velzen's work is now also receiving the credit it deserves, through a book and an exhibition at Weisbard. This is photography with a capital "F," photography that must be seen, photography embedded in the fertile humus of Rotterdam.
And speaking of Rotterdam… Amsterdammers Cas Oorthuys, Ed van der Elsken, Aart Klein, and Maria Austria were great observers with a sense of the Zeitgeist. Their names resonate more often than those of their counterparts Robert de Hartogh (1942-2022), Ton den Haan (1937-2024), Jan Henderik (1935-2018), Peter Martens (1937-1992), and Leo van Velzen – photographers who can be considered part of the Rotterdam School, a school characterized by intense, raw, and intimately focused work.
