Erwin Olaf

Erwin Olaf was born in 1959 in Hilversum, The Netherlands, and passed away in 2023 in Groningen, The Netherlands. He lived and worked in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

 

During his lifetime Olaf was an internationally renowned artist whose diverse practice centred around society’s marginalized individuals including women, people of colour, and the LGBTQ+ community. In 2019, following the acquisition of 500 works by in the Rijksmuseum, Olaf became a Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands. On the occasion Taco Dibbits, the director of the Rijksmuseum, called Olaf “one of the most important photographers of the final quarter of the 20th century”.

Erwin Olaf was born in 1959 in Hilversum, The Netherlands, and passed away in 2023 in Groningen, The Netherlands. He lived and worked in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

 

During his lifetime Olaf was an internationally renowned artist whose diverse practice centred around society’s marginalized individuals including women, people of colour, and the LGBTQ+ community. In 2019, following the acquisition of 500 works by in the Rijksmuseum, Olaf became a Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands. On the occasion Taco Dibbits, the director of the Rijksmuseum, called Olaf “one of the most important photographers of the final quarter of the 20th century”.

 

In 2018 Olaf completed the series Shanghai, Palm Springs, and Berlin – a trio of monumental photographic and filmic tableaux depicting periods of seismic change in diverse geographic locations and the consequences of the citizens embraced and othered by urban progress. Like much of his work, the series are contextualized by complex race relations, the devastation of economic divisions and the possible complications of sexuality.  Across his 40-year career Olaf maintained and the same activist’s approach to equality as his career defining documentation of pre-AIDS gay liberation in Amsterdam’s 1980s nightlife.  Through photography he provided a platform for those who defied societal norms by showing a world of people finding themselves in non-conforming positions and portraying a different vision of reality. 

 

His bold and sometimes controversial approach earned the artist several prestigious collaborations from Vogue and Louis Vuitton, to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He designed the national side of the Euro coin for King Willem-Alexander in 2013 and served as the official portrait artist for the Dutch Royal Family in 2017. He was awarded the Netherlands’ prestigious Johannes Vermeer Award, in addition to Photographer of the Year at the International Colour Awards, and Kunstbeeld magazine’s Dutch Artist of the Year. In 2025 Olaf will have an exhibition showing an extensive overview of his oeuvre in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.