In Rotterdam, de allereerste kleurenfoto’s 1937–1945 Rotterdam finally appears, after roughly eighty years, as it truly was: realistically rendered in color.
We mainly know the striking images of the prewar city and the devastating effects of the German bombing through black-and-white photographs. Rotterdam City Archives found three hundred exceptional color slides that cast the past in a different light. This publication brings together a selection of outstanding quality. These earliest color slides add color — and with it, new meaning — to Rotterdam, then and now.
Very few color images from 1937–1945 are known in the Netherlands. The few surviving slides are often faded or mold-damaged. Heirs of amateur photographers and archives showed little interest in multicolored slides.
As a result, memories of wartime and prewar Rotterdam remained visible only in black and white for a long time. That changed when Rotterdam City Archives recognized the value of rediscovered color slides several years earlier, restored them digitally, and created a remarkable digital collection of the city before and after its destruction. It became a rich and varied collection of three hundred slides made by Rotterdam amateur photographers.
We see everyday life and seemingly random views of streets or canals in the cool colors of icy winter weather or the warm tones of a balmy summer. Particularly striking are the photographs of the burning city and smoldering ruins after the bombing, some taken by Adolf Hitler’s personal photographer.
For Rotterdam, de allereerste kleurenfoto’s, 1937–1945 a selection was made from previously unknown photographs by Richard Boske, Hendrik Sutterland, Jan Willemstijn, Jaap Tieman, and Gerrit Jan Derks. Supplemented with the oldest known color-slide collections by Alphons Hustinx, Van Dam, and Hugo Jaeger, this selection has great documentary and cultural-historical value.
Rotterdam, de allereerste kleurenfoto's 1937–1945 — René Spork, Joop de Jong
Pages: 120
Price: € 20.00
Publisher: Uitgeverij Diafragma
ISBN: 9789490631215
Language: Dutch. This article refers to the Dutch-language edition.
