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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. Arbeit macht frei (Labor liberates) is the second work in van Leeuwen’s ten-piece barb-wire series. In the series, the shadowy self-portraits evoke a variety of emotions including isolation and despair. The lack of a range of color except for the shades of blue from the cyanotype process and the white paper emphasize the composition of the images as well as the emotional qualities of the work.  (For Grades 4-6) What is going on in this work? What do you think the photographer is trying to convey in this image? Why do you think he decided to use this particular technique instead of another? (For Grades 9-12) What is going on in this image? How is it different from the rest of the images in the series? What do you think the photographer is trying to convey in this work? |
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Jan van Leeuwen |
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