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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. Cyanotypes are photographs that are typically produced without a camera. They are also referred to as photograms or sunprints. The process was created in the first half of the 1800s and was used by photographers in a variety of ways including to record botanical specimens. Objects are placed on top of a piece of light-sensitive paper. When exposed to light, the areas covered by the objects are unexposed and remain light in color while the areas around the objects are exposed to the light and darken in color. The paper is then developed and fixed. Cyanotypes refer specifically to photograms that are produced on paper treated with chemicals that produces a brilliant blue (“cyan”) color when exposed and washed. To create his cyanotype images, van Leeuwen uses a large format camera to produce a negative. The exposure time is about two minutes. To achieve the final cyanotype, the negative is contact-printed with a treated paper in a light box. The final cyanotype positive is produced after an exposure of eight to ten hours.  (For Grades 4-6) How is this work similar to the images in the rest of the series? How is it different? The artist created these images in response to experiences and memories he had from his childhood. What recent event has impacted you? If you created an art work about the event, what would it be? (For Grades 9-12) What are some emotions and ideas associated with the color blue? Are any of these emotions or ideas captured in this work? What was the photographer’s intent with this particular image? How does it relate to the series? If this work was not in the series, how would the impact of the series change? How does the composition of this work contribute to the image? |
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Jan van Leeuwen
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