Hochspannung! (High Voltage!)

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.

Hochspannung! (High Voltage!) is part of a series of ten works.  In these works, van Leeuwen is not only the photographer, but he is also the subject.  The hands shown in this work is the artist’s own hands.  The series reflects the images and events the photographer 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 Leeuwen read her poems, they “roused a storm of emotions in me. From that moment on my self-portraits changed.”

Discussion Questions

(For Grades K-3)

What do you see in this work?

What shapes do you see in this work?

What color is this work?

Bibliography

This list of resources is available for use at the Dubois Library at the Museum of Photographic Arts. The Library is open by appointment to MOPA Members, educators and researchers, and its collections are available for on-site use only. Contact the Library at 619-238-7559x216 or library@mopa.org.

Neusüss, Floris Michael, Thomas F. Barrow, and Charles Hagen. 1994. Experimental Vision: the evolution of the photogram since 1919. Niwot, Colo: Roberts Rinehart Publishers in association with the Denver Art Museum. 

Van Leeuwen, Jan. Archival Materials. Vertical Files. Museum of Photographic Arts, Edmund L. and Nancy K. Dubois Library, San Diego, CA.