The Maria Austria Institute (MAI) collects and preserves high-quality photographic archives by photographers with a strong connection to Amsterdam. MAI does so to ensure that these photographers’ work remains part of the Netherlands’ visual heritage. Henny Riemens’s photographs were newly added to the MAI image archive.
Henny Riemens began her training in the late forties under the then-young Frits Lemaire on Leidsestraat in Amsterdam. Her studies there were short-lived. During the same period, she met Corneille Beverloo—known simply as Corneille—in Amsterdam and moved with him to Paris in 1950.
The City of Light became their home, on Rue Santeuil, although they married in Amsterdam in 1955. She remained his muse until 1968. She was truly an eyewitness to CoBrA and extensively photographed its members at work and afterward during the movement’s brief existence.
Riemens traveled through Africa with Corneille in the fifties, producing documentary series in Senegal, Nigeria and Ethiopia. In the early sixties, they moved to a larger studio apartment on Rue Jean Ferrandi in Montparnasse. After separating from Corneille in 1968, Henny Riemens continued to live at this address. Her book Neem Nou Parijs appeared in the well-known Bruna series in 1977.
View Henny Riemens’s photographic archive at MAI.
In partnership with the Amsterdam City Archives, the Maria Austria Institute preserves, manages and, where possible, digitizes the archives. MAI brings the archives to the public’s attention and organizes presentations, exhibitions, books and educational activities.
