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| Jan van Leeuwen was
born in 1932 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. A salesman, office
manager, and buyer for trading companies, his early photographs
were images of the products he represented. In 1986, he began
to seriously study photography and attended a workshop devoted
to self-portraits. The workshop greatly impacted his photography
and from that point forward the self-portrait became his main subject. A
well-known Dutch photo-collector introduced van Leeuwen to the cyanotype process. Once there were 6000000 is part of a ten-piece barb-wire series. Van Leeuwen is not only the photographer, but he is also the subject of his images. Using his own self-portrait, the haunting images of a row of figures reflect the images and events he experienced as a young boy during the occupation of Amsterdam by the Nazis during World War II. The inspiration for van Leeuwen’s exploration of his experiences and memories was thirty-five poems by a Jewish Dutch woman, Ida Vos, who was one of four student survivors in a class of thirty-five. When van Leewen read her poems, they “roused a storm of emotions in me. From that moment on my self-portraits changed.”  (For Grades 4-6) What compositional design elements do you see in this image? (ex. shapes, line, texture, pattern, etc.) How would the image change if it was in black and white? How would the image change if it was in color? (For Grades 9-12) How does the decision to use the cyanotype process affect the image and its impact on the viewer? What recent event in history has affected you personally? How would you capture the event or your emotions to the event in a work of art? |
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Jan van Leeuwen |
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Art page (kid-friendly) |
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