Photo: Bert Nienhuis
Background
Bert Nienhuis was born
in Amsterdam in 1944, in an artistic and intellectual milieu. His
grandfather was the well-known potter Bert Nienhuis, whose own
father (also named Bert) had been an architect and urban planner.
His mother, Anka Szymelmic, came from a family of Polish Jews and
had met her husband in the mid-1930s, when both of them were
visiting the Soviet Union. Through his parents' social circle,
young Bert came into contact with well-known photographers such as
Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, and Aart Klein. Inspired by their
example, the boy decided to become a photographer
himself.
Bert Nienhuis went to art school and film school, but as a
photographer he is largely self-taught. Before devoting himself to
photography full-time, he worked as a sound technician in the early
1970s on several films by Ed van der Elsken. Van der Elsken's
intense devotion to his work had a profound influence on Nienhuis,
who was also inspired by photographers such as Henri
Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, and August Sander.
Nienhuis received his first photo assignments from Amsterdam's city
archives in 1974 and 1975, for two series about the Beurs van
Berlage and the Amsterdam district of De Pijp. He came to Vrij
Nederland in 1975, as a temporary replacement for Willem Diepraam,
and later joined the magazine's permanent staff. In 1976, Nienhuis
and Eddy Posthuma de Boer were asked by the Rijksmuseum to produce
a photo reportage on unemployment in the Netherlands. These
penetrating photographs established Nienhuis' reputation as one of
the leading documentary photographers of his
generation.
In the years that followed, Nienhuis worked together closely with
the Jewish Historical Museum (JHM) to document life in the
Netherlands' Jewish community. In 1985, for instance, the museum
asked him to produce a reportage on the festivities surrounding the
350th anniversary of the Jewish community in Amsterdam. In 1987, on
the recommendation of the JHM, Nienhuis received a commission from
the Dutch culture ministry for a series of photos entitled Young
and old in Jewish Amsterdam. Many of these photos later became part
of the museum's collection.
Bert Nienhuis lives and works in Amsterdam.
