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Les Copains

by Johan van der Keuken

Photographs: Johan van der Keuken

Text: Willem van Zoetendaal

Publisher: Foci Press & Van Zoetendaal

64 pages

Year: 2015

ISBN: 9784990717384

Price: 33 €

Comments: Paperback with obi, language: engl/jap/fr, 16 x 24 cm

Johan van der Keuken’s career as a documentary film-maker, author, and photographer spanned four decades, until his passing in 2001. Based in Amsterdam, he addressed many topics in his work. First published in 1955, ‘Wij Zijn 17’ is a book of photos of his friends and classmates, taken by him when he was seventeen. These portraits of post-war Dutch teenagers address the intangible theme of youth in a touching and personal way.

"We produced new prints from van der Keuken's original negatives for the publication of wij zin 17. In this process, we discovered that van der Keuken dramatically cropped his images. For example, one vertical image from the book that seems to show a boy leaning on a wall and smoking a pipe was found to actually have been a horizontal photograph capturing him lying down, rotated 90 degrees and slightly trimmed. In another example, a self-portrait taken with a friend was found to have been shot in a mirror, but published with the mirror frame cropped out.
The negatives thus revealed that van der Keuken approached the idea of a photobook with an open mind free of conventions. Les Copains will mainly feature alternate takes and full-frame versions of the images in wij zin 17 and thereby allow viewers to experience the photographed moment prior to their subjection to the creative process of photobook production. "

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