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* 1978 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL)
* 1978 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL)
* 1979 Haags Oemeentemuseum, Den Haag (NL)
* 1979 Haags Oemeentemuseum, Den Haag (NL)
* 2005 ''Madrid, mayo 1955. Cas Oorthuys'', Fundación Carlos de Amberes (SP)
* 2005 ''Madrid, mayo 1955. Cas Oorthuys'', Fundación Carlos de Amberes (SP)<ref>Oorthuys, C. B., Schierbeek, L. R., & De Sterck, G. (2005). Madrid, mayo 1955: Cas Oorthuys. Real Diputación San Andrés de los Flamencos, Fundación Carlos de Amberes.</ref>
* 2018 retrospective ''This Is Cas: Vintage Photography of Cas Oorthuys'', Nederlands Fotomuseum. (NL)
* 2018 retrospective ''This Is Cas: Vintage Photography of Cas Oorthuys'', Nederlands Fotomuseum. (NL)


Revision as of 09:07, 14 November 2018

Casparus Bernardus Oorthuys (November 1, 1908–July 22, 1975), known as Cas, was a Dutch photographer and designer active from the 1930s until the 1970s.

Education

Casparus Bernardus (Cas) Oorthuys, born in Leiden, was the fourth child and first son of Dorothea Catherina Helena Christina de Stoppelaar (1875-1948) and Reverend Gerardus Oorthuys (1876-1959), who started his career as a pastor in Brakel. In 1909 the family moved to Amsterdam where from 1921 Oorthuys attended the Amsterdam Lyceum for three years before enrolling in the technical school in the Timorplein in Amsterdam. From 1926-30  studied architecture at the School for Architecture, Decorative Arts and Art Crafts in Haarlem and, after the closure of this school in 1927, in the architecture department of the Haarlem MTS, during which time he joined the free-thinking Dutch Association of Abstinent Students, and first took up photography.

Career

In 1930 Oorthuys joined the municipality of Amsterdam as a structural engineer and was involved, among other things, in the design of the market halls on the Jan van Galenstraat. In 1932 he, with many others, lost his job as a result of the economic crisis.

He worked before WW2 producing photography and graphics for communist and anti-fascist organisations

Resistance work during WW2

During the war Oorthuys helped forge identity papers and photographed clandestinely for the Underground Camera to document the activities of the German occupiers, and also the awful Hongerwinter, the Dutch Famine of 1944/45. During the postwar recovery he recorded the Nuremberg war crimes trials and the rebuilding of his homeland.

In 1939 Oorthuys had divorced Sini Broerse, with whom he had two children, and married scriptwriter Lydia on 3 April 1940, just before the war broke out in May. During the Occupation, Oorthuys became involved in the Personal Identification Centre established in 1942 and made passport photos for fake ID cards, while earning a meagre living on an assignment from publishing company Contact for a book about agriculture. In May 1944, when he took ration cards to the architect J.J. van der Linden and others in hiding, he was arrested by the Germans and imprisoned in camp Amersfoort. Unexpectedly, he was released again in August, presumably at the interposition of Nico de Haas who, despite having been with Oorthuys one of the founders in 1936 of the ‘photo and film’ group of the Association for the Defense of Cultural Law (BKVK) in preparation of the anti-fascist exhibition De Olympiade Onder Dictatuur (DOOD),  had quickly worked up to become a prominent Dutch SS man after the German invasion.

On release Oorthuys connected with De Ondergedoken (‘Underground’) Camera, formed around Dolle Dinsdag on the initiative of the German emigrant Fritz Kahlenberg and the former soldier Tony van Renterghem; ‘Underground’ because the Nazi occupiers declared a complete ban on “photographing, filming, drawing, and displaying persons and things in any other way outside of domestic spaces” from November 20, 1944. The aim was initially to document the Allies’ liberation which was longer in coming than hoped, and instead they recorded a severe winter of hunger and resistance in photos that have become the image of the German occupation, especially Cas Oorthuys’ picture of a woman with a piece of bread in close-up. A variation was published on the cover of Amsterdam tijdens den hongerwinter (‘Amsterdam During the Winter of Hunger’) published by Contact / De Bezige Bij, in 1947, while the now more famous image from this series reached an audience of 9 million through the 1955 exhibition and publication The Family of Man.[1][2][3][4][5]

Post-war

After the war Oorthuys had maintained the left-wing convictions that had prompted his joining the worker-photographer movement Vereeniging van Arbeiders-Fotografen in 1932, and with his equally idealistic friends Carel Blazer, Eva Besnyö, and Emmy Andriesse,[6] formed the Vereniging van Beoefenaars der Gebonden Kunsten, the GKf, on September 1, 1945. From 1945-75 he produced numerous books and reports for Dutch industry, agriculture, regions and cities and undertook reportage in Indonesia (1947), photographed the Peace Conference in Paris (1948), and in 1950 produced reportage in West Irian.[7]

With Lydia, Oorthuys had three children, sisters Fenna and Hanna, the youngest a son, Frank, born in 1960, and photography became a family concern; during the summer holidays from 1951 they traveled to make 28 photo pocketbook in a series for Contact-Photo books, and with Bonjour Paris, on different countries.[8] During this period he also designed five postage stamps (1951) and two more in 1964, and for the Belgian Ministry of Information covered the Congo in 1952, with further reports on cattle raising in Jersey (1954) and on Macedonia, Serbia and Spain (1955)

Awards and legacy

Oorthuys decorated with Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1971
  • 1964 ANWB Prize for the book Amsterdam onze hoofdstad
  • 1966 CPNB prize for the book Netherlands
  • 1969 the Sledelijk Museum, Amsterdam, marks Oorthuys' 60th anniversary with an exhibition and book
  • 1971 decorated, Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau
  • 1975 postage stamp commemorating the anniversary of liberation

Oorthuys died July 22, 1975 in Amsterdam. At the end of his career he left 500,000 pictures, a huge archive faithfully maintained by his wife Lydia who until she was in her seventies sold its imagery to a variety of clients before she donated the entire collection to Nederlands Fotomuseum.

Exhibitions

  • 1937 Group exhibition Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL)
  • 1946 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL)
  • 1953 Museum of Modern Art, New York (USA)
  • 1954 Subjektive Fotografie 2, Saarbrücken (D)
  • 1955 The Family of Man, MoMA, New York, (USA)
  • 1957 Biennale di Fotografia, Venice (I)
  • 1961 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL)
  • 1969 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL)
  • 1970 Haags Museum, Den Haag (NL) Portraits
    • Hoogovens (NL) Mensen-People[5]
    • Psychologisch Laboratory, Nijmegen (NL)
    • Kontrasten, Haags Museum, Den Haag (NL)
    • In de Prinsetun, Leeuwarden (NL) «Mensen-People»
    • Kunstcentrum, Berge (NL)
  • 1971 Meyhuis, Helmond (NL) Mensen-People
    • Moscow (USSR) Mensen-People
  • 1974 Oalerie Fiolet, Amsterdam (NL)
  • 1975 Amsterdam Historisch Museum, (NL)
  • 1978 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL)
  • 1979 Haags Oemeentemuseum, Den Haag (NL)
  • 2005 Madrid, mayo 1955. Cas Oorthuys, Fundación Carlos de Amberes (SP)[9]
  • 2018 retrospective This Is Cas: Vintage Photography of Cas Oorthuys, Nederlands Fotomuseum. (NL)

Publications

  • Oorthuys, Cas; Vriens, Jacques, (author.); Kleijwegt, Gerrit, (translator.) (2000), Allemensen! = everyman!, Rotterdam Stichting Uitgeverij Duo/Duo, ISBN 978-90-72971-57-9 {{citation}}: |author2= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Oorthuys, Cas; Jong, Joop de; Mulder, Toni; Suermondt, Rik (2001), Cas Oorthuys, onderweg : Europa, 1945-1965, Contact Amsterdam, ISBN 978-90-254-6321-2
  • Oorthuys, Cas; Thys van den Audenaerde, Dirk F. E; Creemers-Palmers, M (1992), Mensen aan de stroom : reisimpressies van Cas Oorthuys in Belgisch-Kongo, 1959 : foto-album, Museum-Tervuren
  • Oorthuys, Cas; Bool, Flip; Raaff, Henk (2004), Cas Oorthuys : Amsterdam, B. Lubberhuizen, ISBN 978-90-5937-063-0
  • Oorthuys, Cas (1992), Guaranteed real Dutch, Congo, Uitgeverij Duo/Duo, ISBN 978-90-72971-11-1
  • Oorthuys, Cas; Alings, Wim (1969), Peoplevan Cas Oorthuys.English approximations by James Brockway, Contact
  • Oorthuys, Cas; Alings, Wim (1969), Mensen. : People. Een fotoboek/A book of photographs van Cas Oorthuys, Contact
  • Oorthuys, Cas (1981), Oxford in focus, Cassirer, ISBN 978-0-85181-100-0
  • Oorthuys, Cas (1970), Het laatste jaar, 1944-45 : een verslag in foto's over onderdrukking en bevrijding, Contact
  • Vries-Kruyt, T. de; Kretschmar, Vivienne van; Oorthuys, Cas (1971), Small ship, great sea : the life story of a mongoloid boy, Collins, ISBN 978-0-00-460201-1
  • Oorthuys, Cas (1947), The Netherlands : seen by the tourist = Nederland : zoals de toerist het ziet, Contact
  • Oorthuys, Cas (1958), This is Brussels and the World Exhibition, Cassirer

References

  1. ^ Popular Photography, Nov 1996, Vol. 60, No. 11, page 11, ISSN 1542-0337
  2. ^ Steichen, Edward; Steichen, Edward, 1879-1973, (organizer.); Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967, (writer of foreword.); Norman, Dorothy, 1905-1997, (writer of added text.); Lionni, Leo, 1910-1999, (book designer.); Mason, Jerry, (editor.); Stoller, Ezra, (photographer.); Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1955). The family of man : the photographic exhibition. Published for the Museum of Modern Art by Simon and Schuster in collaboration with the Maco Magazine Corporation. {{cite book}}: |author6= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Hurm, Gerd, 1958-, (editor.); Reitz, Anke, (editor.); Zamir, Shamoon, (editor.) (2018), The family of man revisited : photography in a global age, London I.B.Tauris, ISBN 978-1-78672-297-3 {{citation}}: |author1= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ Sandeen, Eric J (1995), Picturing an exhibition : the family of man and 1950s America (1st ed.), University of New Mexico Press, ISBN 978-0-8263-1558-8
  5. ^ a b Slager, Henk; Balkema, Annette W (1997), The photographic paradigm, Rodopi, p. 163, ISBN 978-90-420-0187-9
  6. ^ Roosens, Laurent; Salu, Luc, 1948- (1989), History of photography : a bibliography of books, Mansell, p. 7, ISBN 978-0-7201-2310-4{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ "No photographer so much embodies 20th century Dutch reportage photography as Cas Oorthuys." Amsterdam (Netherlands). Stedelijk Museum; Visser, Hripsimé (1996), 100 x photo : 100 photographs from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum ; Bussum : Thoth, ISBN 978-90-6868-147-5
  8. ^ Crawford, Sally (Sally Elizabeth Ellen), (editor.); Ulmschneider, Katharina, (editor.); Elsner, Jaś, (editor.) (2017), Ark of civilization : refugee scholars and Oxford University, 1930-1945 (First ed.), Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-968755-8 {{citation}}: |author1= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ Oorthuys, C. B., Schierbeek, L. R., & De Sterck, G. (2005). Madrid, mayo 1955: Cas Oorthuys. Real Diputación San Andrés de los Flamencos, Fundación Carlos de Amberes.
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