Photo: Alphons Hustinx | Liberation of Puiflijk, Gelderland — stranded tank
The NIOD (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation) acquired more than 1,500 color slides from the war years by photographer Alphons Hustinx. According to the NIOD, color images from the war years are exceptional.
The years '40–'45 were documented in black-and-white photographs and black-and-white films. Apart from this remarkable Hustinx collection, few color photographs from the war are known to exist in Dutch archives.
In the 1980s, this extensive collection of color slides was discovered in the estate of Roermond photographer and filmmaker Alphons Hustinx. It depicts the occupiers’ presence in the Netherlands, wartime destruction, and, above all, the atmosphere of everyday life in the occupied Netherlands between 1940 and 1945.
Alphons Hustinx (1900–1972) came from a prosperous Maastricht family and studied law in his youth. He preferred to spend his time traveling, filming, and photographing. Hustinx loved innovations and began experimenting extensively with color slides immediately after their introduction in 1936.
The practice of color photography was still in its infancy at the end of the 1930s. Technical limitations and the high cost meant that hardly any color photographs from that period survived.
During the occupation, Hustinx photographed the changing streetscape in every province except Zeeland, which the Germans had closed to nonresidents.
Beginning April 25, 2008, these remarkable color photographs were made available online to the public at www.beeldbankwo2.nl.
The image database was intended to contain all images held by Dutch war and resistance museums, memorial centers, and the NIOD—a total of 175,000 images.
