Biography

Discussion

Mark Kolthoff began photographing and filming immediately after his period of study at the *RABK (Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, ‘National Academy of Fine Arts’) in Amsterdam. While this might not seem like a logical move, at a very early stage Kolthoff had entered into a conflict with his study programme stemming from his interest in Cubist painting. His professors at the academy, Antoon Derkinderen and Richard Roland Holst, were pioneers of monumental painting. They shared no affinity with avant-garde movements and easel painting. An intermezzo lasting approximately seven years, during which Kolthoff worked primarily with photography and film, was apparently what he needed to re-orient himself. The illustrator Han Pieck, for whom Kolthoff did advertising work and book covers among other things, had advised him to find a solution to his painting-related problems through photography. It was Pieck who also introduced him to the filmmaker Joris Ivens, the adjunct-director of the film and photo dealership CAPI. Ivens asked Kolthoff to be his personal assistant. In this manner, Mark Kolthoff the painter ended up working at Studio Ivens. ‘Kolt’, as Ivens called him, learned to film simply by doing. Ivens forced a camera into his hands and briefly explained the working process. ‘If you want to learn something about technique, then you’ll have to go to Van Es’ (CAPI’s repairman).

At Studio Ivens, there was an evident interest in both film and photography. In the 1930s, there was no clear boundary dividing the two disciplines: filmmakers shot photos, photographers shot film. In the view of Moholy-Nagy and others, photography was a training school for film. With Kolthoff, it was more of an interchange than a clear progression from photography to film. It was not until Ivens left for Poland in 1932 to shoot a film that Kolthoff began photographing on a serious basis. Prior to this time, however, Kolthoff had made stills and taken shots to document the filmmaking.

In Ivens’ extensive (German-oriented) library, Kolthoff came into contact with New Photography and was inspired by the books of A. Renger Patzsch and L. Moholy-Nagy. Yet he also came across work by John Heartfield and illustrations from German magazines such as the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ, ‘Workers Pictorial Newspaper’) and the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ, ‘Berlin Pictorial Newspaper’).

These photographic influences affected Kolthoff’s camerawork, with Ivens harbouring no appreciation for such extraordinary camera angles and diagonals. As he informed Kolthoff: ‘I don’t want those pretty pictures of yours, (…) I want simple images’. Ivens’ own images were sharp, concise, and rich in contrast, but void of diagonal camera angles.

Vice versa, film also had an influence on Kolthoff’s photography. To many filmmakers in the 1930s, the cameraman was the person in charge of the lighting: it all had to be managed with two lamps. Dark gaps in the image were to be avoided. When there was insufficient lighting for a long shot, one had to rely on numerous detail shots, as in Kolthoff’s film Breken en Bouwen (‘Breaking and Building’). Achieving a balance between light and dark and an attention to detail are elements found in Kolthoff’s photography.

Kolthoff’s work unmistakeably bears the hallmark of New Photography. The avant-garde photography of the 1920s and ’30s consisted of two clear components: aesthetic form and politics. Both are present in Kolthoff’s work, the first particularly in his autonomous shots, the second in his photos for the worker photographers.

It comes as no surprise that Kolthoff, who was strongly drawn to Cubism, displayed a predilection for the graphic effect of light and shadow and the aesthetic play of diagonals in his photography. His archive is filled with numerous shots of the city taken from a bird’s-eye perspective, in which the illusion of three dimensions is abandoned in favour of a new spatiality in the two-dimensional plane. Kolthoff’s oeuvre also includes several still lifes that are typically New Objectivist: a bike saddle, a pot of mustard, or a nutmeg grater, which are photographed sharp, clear, with an emphasis on surface texture.

Kolthoff accepted commissioned portrait work on a sporadic basis. He strived for a certain naturalness in these photos, by printing shots taken at unexpected moments. One portrait not falling into this category is a photo taken of his wife, Hetty, which works precisely because its pose is highly conceived.

What has been preserved of Kolthoff’s work are primarily his photos of labourers and the unemployed. He played a major role in the VAF (Vereeniging van Arbeidersfotografen, ‘Association of Workers Photographers’), an organisation founded in 1931 with the aim of supporting the proletariat in the face of capitalism. One of the VAF’s goals was to teach workers about photographic technique. Kolthoff contributed by organising excursions and holding informal talks with those who were interested.

Through the film and photo dealership CAPI, the ‘worker photographers’ received negative plates that were already past their expiration date. The only real disadvantage was that the exposure time had to be guessed, because the plates had become less sensitive to light. As a worker photographer, Kolthoff photographed life on the streets of Amsterdam, ships transporting goods unaffected by the economic crisis, protest demonstrations, the unemployed, and the Jordaanoproer (‘Jordaan Uprising’). In retrospect, he describes this work as ‘a journalistic sensation photography focussing on the life of the worker, with the most salient events recorded’. With drawing, Kolthoff had already been used to making notations everywhere he went. Accordingly, the switch to the ‘hunting sport’ of journalistic photography was not that big of a step. His subjects were usually photographed in a series of shots, taken from various camera angles. This approach is similar to the journalistic photography series appearing in the German photo magazine Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, but likewise points to his experience as a filmmaker. Kolthoff ‘s photos were based more on journalistic as opposed to political criteria: it was about the ‘scoop’, with currency and newsworthiness holding first priority. His photos were featured in magazines published by the communist press, e.g. De Tribune and Afweerfront (‘Defence Front’). Naturally, these publications chose shots that bolstered their own political message.

In 1937, Kolthoff quit with filmmaking and photography and returned to painting, which had remained his true passion. Looking back, Kolthoff believes this period of reflection may perhaps have influenced his interest in studying form. He nevertheless maintains that photography is too dissimilar from painting for it to have had any real influence. As a painter, the filling of the surface was an issue to be addressed from the very start; as a photographer, it was only in the darkroom that he begins to consider he framing of the image. Notwithstanding, it was not until the late 1930s, after Kolthoff experimented with new perspectives and approaches to filling the surface in photography, that he triumphed over his problems with painting and began to paint in a cubist style.

Kolthoff worked with a 4×4 Rolleiflex camera but made enlargements in the format 18×24. All of his worker photographer shots were taken with this camera. This stems from the fact that it was an easy camera to use on the street without being seen, as people were never certain when he was taking photos. Kolthoff also owned a Plaubel 6×9 camera, with which he took mainly portrait shots. In addition, he owned a modified 9×12 folding camera. Kolthoff used a Perutz fine-grain developer with coarse-grain film material, requiring high precision in terms of exposure and developing.

All that has survived of Kolthoff’s total photographic production are approximately 1,000 negatives. He destroyed some of his negatives himself during the war; others were simply lost. In spite of its small size, a resounding interest in Kolthoff’s oeuvre arose starting in 1978, with the emphasis on his worker photography. This area is likewise where his importance lay in the 1930s: firstly, through his own publications, secondly through his contribution to the formation of the worker photographers. Yet there is another aspect of his work that most certainly deserves attention, i.e. his autonomous photography. While Kolthoff’s intermezzo with photography and film was perhaps of less significance to his own development as a painter, there is no questioning its relevance to the history of photography and film in the Netherlands.

Documentation