Erwin Olaf

Erwin Olaf – Angry provocations in commercial aesthetics

Erwin Olaf was born Erwin Olaf Springveld in Hilversum on 2 June 1959. He initially studied journalism at the School of Journalism in Utrecht and then turned to photography. The roots of Erwin Olaf’s photographic career path lay in the advertising industry where he worked for great international brands such as Microsoft, Nokia and Levi’s, and its glossy, commercially oriented aesthetic left clear traces in his work. As an artist, Olaf was initially driven primarily by his juvenile rebellious rage, which he converted into sexual provocations: One picture from the Squares series, a black and white nude of a young man ‘ejaculating’ a champagne bottle, became an icon of the gay scene, whilst another series, Ladies Hats, questioned existing ideals of masculinity. The striking provocations of the early work later gave way to a more subtle composition, which Olaf staged, however, all the more opulently. The trigger for this change was the death of his beloved father in the early 2000s. 

Enigmatic stagings stimulate the imagination

Erwin Olaf does not leave anything to chance with his pictures. The artist goes to great lengths in the staging of his smoothly polished and above all blemish-free worlds. Breaks in the perfectly styled compositions only arise through irritating details that are deliberately incorporated by the photographer. Erwin Olaf does not tell stories with his pictures but only hints at them, leaving it to the viewer’s imagination about whether the events are already in the past or are yet to take place. Olaf’s art is above all about questions, not answers. This philosophy often lends the photographer something mysterious and encourages very different and often contradictory attempts at interpretation. Olaf drew important inspiration from early on from the paintings of the old masters, including of course his compatriot Rembrandt, but also the German painters Arnold Böcklin, Caspar David Friedrich and Franz von Lenbach. Sometimes, Olaf’s images are closer to paintings than photographs. 

Olaf has long been a superstar in the Netherlands

Erwin Olaf also uses the possibilities of digital editing for his photographs and was thus able to place long-dead historical personalities as victims of assassinations and accidents in the picture series Royal Blood which he created in 2000. His models appear, for example, as Process Diana or Empress Sissi. In this way, the dangerous power of images is simultaneously put up for discourse and the inherent danger of manipulation is pointed out. The Dutch euro coins in circulation since 2014 showing the head of King Willem-Alexander, were designed by Erwin Olaf. He has received prizes and awards for his art from all over the world, including Photographer of the Year at the International Colour Awards in the USA in 2006, and the €100,000 Johannes Vermeer Prijs in his native Netherlands in 2011. 

Erwin Olaf lives in Amsterdam.