Biography

Discussion

The interior architect Wil Bertheux once referred to Jan Versnel as ‘the natural successor of his older colleagues Jaap d’Oliveira and Hans Spies’. With this characterisation, he was in fact describing Versnel as one of the best architectural, interior, and furniture photographers in the Netherlands. By no means was Bertheux overstating his case. In addition to architectural photography, Jan Versnel is a specialist in advertising photography for furniture manufacturers and boasts numerous interior architects as his clients. Less known is that Versnel is also specialised in photographing sculpture and paintings. He is still active as a photographer to this day, who stays up-to-date on developments in the profession. One can often run into him at the opening of an exhibition, with photography, architecture, or design as the theme. Versnel has built an impressive oeuvre, spanning more than forty years. His archive includes between 150,000 and 200,000 shots.

Versnel never completed any one study programme in photography, but acquired his knowledge and experience at various schools and with a variety of teachers. As his drawing skills were apparent in primary school, his parents decided that he should attend the Grafische School (‘Graphics School’). At the time, drawing—both figural and after nature—still formed an important part of the study programme at this school. Versnel studied to become a lithographer. This educational programme entailed the reproduction of black-and-white and colour images on lithographic stones. Versnel is convinced that these exercises in manual training taught him how to see—experience from which he still benefits to this day. The same applies to life drawing. They provided insight into the positioning of the human body, both at rest and when in motion. Such insights were later invaluable when taking interior shots for advertising, in which live models were featured. With long exposure times, the movement had to be frozen in the right way, ensuring, on one hand, that the posture appeared ‘natural’, but slightly exaggerated, on the other: all to make it seem more convincing.

At the Grafische School, Versnel received his first instruction in photography from the then renowned photographer B.F. Eilers, who had been hired as a teacher there in December 1939. The existing monographs on Eilers state that his time teaching at the school was brief, because he reportedly lacked the necessary didactic qualities. Versnel, however, maintains that Eilers, though by no means a modern photographer, was an inspiring teacher. His critique was both vital and constructive, and he was the one to open Versnel’s eyes to photography. Because Eilers had contributed his own photographic equipment to the Grafische School, the students had access to a single wooden camera and two lenses for learning purposes. At the time, ‘free’ photography was a new component of the study programme. In addition, there was the reproduction photography department, which, from 1940 to 1944, was run by the photographer J.P.C. Lauterslager. The technical photography taught at the school was very outdated: they were still teaching how to prepare wet plates (collodion process).

After the Grafische School, Versnel chose to continue his studies in the advertising programme offered at the Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs (‘Institute of Applied Art Education’). The opportunities for instruction in photography at the institute were not that much more than at his previous school, due to the scarcity of photographic materials during the war. Here Versnel received lessons in advertising draughtsmanship from Willem Papenhuijzen and the industrial designer W.C.J. (Wim) Jaarsveld. Immediately after the war—during which he was forced to cut his study short and go into hiding for a period of time—he received photography lessons at this same institute from Jaap D’Oliveira, who was then teaching there one day a week.

Following his schooling, Versnel sought work as an assistant with an established photographer in order to improve his practical skills. He was hired by the medical doctor/photographer Nico Jesse in Ameide, who had enquired regarding an assistant at the applied art institute. As a photographer, Jesse was modern thinking. He owned a complete set of Leica equipment and worked with flash equipment, which he had designed himself in collaboration with a photography dealer. Jesse photographed a wide variety of topics, including portraits of fellow classmates from his past or colleagues in the medical profession. But he also did corporate reportages, with Versnel assisting him.

Jesse moved in sophisticated circles. While the young Versnel was drawn to this world in a way, he also felt not entirely at ease. Among Jesse’s friends were Gerrit and Jan Rietveld. It was Jan Rietveld who renovated Jesse’s studio at the time Versnel worked there as his assistant. When Versnel gave up his position as Jesse’s assistant to set up his own studio, he was left with no other choice but to acquire a Leica in order to do his work properly. In practice, however, the direct viewfinder and the negative format of this camera failed to meet his satisfaction. The options it offered were too limited for what his assignments required. Using a Rolleiflex, Versnel switched to the 9×12 format of the technical camera, to which he has remained loyal ever since. His first client was Geveke, a company in Amsterdam that imported farm implements from the United States. With the money from this commission, Versnel was able to buy a technical camera with a 6.5 cm wide-angle lens and a Raya enlargement container with an adjustable negative holder. He still uses this camera to this day.

Until 1960, Versnel worked with 15 DIN glass plates. He then switched to sheet film. Glass plates had one important advantage: there was no ‘moving around’ in the cartridge as sometimes occurring with sheet films due to temperature fluctuations that resulted from long exposure times in poor lighting conditions. It was only after 1955 that Versnel received commissions for colour photography. His first interior shot in colour was taken for UMS, a furniture company for which Versnel compiled catalogues together with Benno Premsela. During this same period, Versnel also took colour photos for the machine manufacturer Werkspoor, to be used in the company’s annual reports. Versnel was obliged to master colour photography by experimenting on his own, as he had not acquired this knowledge at any point in his education. Furthermore, the early colour material required a bit of improvisational talent, as its quality was rather inconsistent.

Jan Versnel’s collaboration with Fridtjof Versnel—starting in the 1970s—marked a considerable improvement in his colour photography. From this point forward, all coloured negatives were developed in-house. As there was no longer any need to rely on the insight and finishing work carried out by technicians in the colour labs—whether done thoroughly or not—it became easier to better meet the quality demands of the clients.

It was Gerrit Rietveld who gave Versnel one of his first commissions to photograph a work of architecture: a parking shed for bikes that Rietveld had designed for the city of Utrecht.

Versnel’s further specialisation in architectural photography was something that arose more or less by chance. In the years after the World War II, there was a great deal of construction going on in Rotterdam. Consequently, there was ample opportunity for an architectural photographer to make a decent living in the city. At the request of the architect B. Merkelbach, Versnel took a number of shots for a modern building project designed by the firm Van den Broek en Bakema, which had lost its entire archive as a result of the bombardment of Rotterdam. To encourage a new start, Versnel’s photographs were handed over to Van den Broek and Bakema during a meeting of a group of renowned architects (Van den Broek en Bakema, Merkelbach, Elling, Karsten, Van Tijen, Maaskant, and others). The presentation of these photos at this meeting did not go unnoticed, ultimately leading to additional photo assignments.

Starting in 1951, Versnel’s work received even greater notoriety through the publication of his photos in the newly established architectural magazine Forum. From its first year of publication (1946), this magazine devoted substantial attention to quality architectural photography, consistently citing the names of the photographers whose work was featured. The interest of the editorial board went beyond just the architecture alone. In nos. 3/4 of the magazine for the year 1948, they devoted (in connection with the exhibition Foto ’48 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam) approximately forty pages to the work of the departments of graphic artists and photographers of the GKf. At this time, Versnel was not yet a member. Incidentally, Versnel was not the only architectural photographer in Rotterdam during the post-war years: studios such as Foto Renes, J.A. Vrijhof, Gerrit Burg, Jan van Maanen, and Steef Zoetmulder were also actively taking photographs of this genre.

Versnel was drawn to the circle of the Gkf photographers, who, like him, were also living or working in Amsterdam. In about 1950, he approached Eva Besnyö to ask if she would be willing to nominate him for membership in the GKf. The circle of the GKf members was then still very small: no more than fifteen members, with most primarily active in socio-documentary photography. Versnel has always been a devoted member of the GKf, taking on numerous managerial tasks within the organisation.

The GKf became involved in a succession dispute at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (previously the Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs) in 1971, concerning one of its members, Jaap d’Oliveira. The academy’s managing board asked the GKf (then under the chairmanship of Kors van Bennekom) to put together a committee comprised of its members in order to advise on a possible successor to D’Oliveira. From March until the summer holiday, Jan Versnel and Hans Katan were to teach the students. By this time, D’Oliveira had already left on sick leave. The GKf wanted Carel Blazer, a member of this advisory committee, to be hired as an instructor. The committee, however, was unable to come to an agreement on this point, and Blazer subsequently dropped out. Because the Rietveld Academy still hoped to select someone from among photographers of the GKf, Versnel and Katan continued to teach, albeit without the GKf’s backing. In 1973, Versnel was given a permanent position. He continued teaching classes at the Rietveld Academy for 12.5 years, but—as he described it himself—it was something that never came easy. One obstacle, in his view, was the students’ lack of motivation and the ideas necessary to complete an assignment satisfactorily. As a rule, there was no agreement between their solutions and the assignments that had been given. A teacher’s request to redo an approach that was incorrect—in order to achieve a better result—was quickly interpreted as detention work. Once an attempt had been made, for many this was simply the end of the conversation!

According to Versnel, a good architectural photo is a photo that can be used to determine the building’s actual proportions. A case in point: when Versnel showed the architect Dudok a number of shots taken at his request (in connection with a working visit to Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1950s), the latter responded by walking excitedly towards a chest of drawers. He pulled out a transparent perspective drawing and laid it on top of one of the photos. Without having consulted each other in advance, it turned out the drawing of the architectural structure fit the photographic impression perfectly.

As Jan Versnel professes: ‘A good architectural photo requires not only insight, but especially tremendous patience. The ideal situation is to visit the building together with the architect, to walk around it and through it, in order to determine the camera angle in joint consultation, with the architect sometimes also takes a look under the cloth.’ During their tour, some architects, including Gerrit Rietveld and Maaskant, open-heartedly related what was successful about their building and what was not, and what most definitely should be and what had better not be photographed. In this manner, Versnel was able to gain a certain view of the subject.

One can draw a clear distinction between Versnel’s photos and works by those preceding him. Jaap d’Oliveira’s photos, for instance, are noticeably ’empty’ and tend towards a certain sterility. Elements that were irrelevant were kept out of the photos. With D’Oiveira or Spies, wash hanging out to dry from the window of a flat was reason enough to ask whether it could be taken down; if not possible, they would then simply return another day. The architect concerned was perhaps also to blame for such a working approach. It was Gerrit Rietveld’s wish, for example, that his architecture appeared timeless. He therefore had no tolerance for people figuring in the shots taken of his buildings, as it would immediately date them. Rietveld was inconsistent in this respect, however, as automobiles were evidently overlooked as a problem. Contrary to D’Oliveira and Spies, Versnel chose to include people in his photos, though he did so without detracting attention from the main subject. His photos are rarely empty: the architectural works, or parts thereof, frequently fill the entire image. On occasion, however, skies filled with clouds—typical of the Dutch landscape—surmount the image’s upper edge. A strong contrast in the play of light and dark enlivens Versnel’s photos.

Versnel believes that the current ideal image of an architectural shot is different than it was in the period dating from the 1950s to the ’70s, with its function appearing to have undergone a change. Today, the preference is for glamorous photos that, while enticing, nevertheless tend to overshoot their purpose: they are far less informative than they are appealing. People forget just how important the documentary value of architectural photos taken according to the earlier perspective can be: over the years, buildings are fundamentally altered or even disappear altogether. In such cases, the original state can then only be determined through photographs. When working on commissions, Versnel does not rule out personal interpretation. Besides functional photos, he always takes a number of ‘lefkieken’ (‘bold snapshots’, a term commonly applied among Dutch-language photographers), which convey the photographer’s personal take on a building.

Interior shots are a difficult aspect of architectural photography: for a good long shot, there are only a limited number of camera angles. An obvious solution is simply to select a high vantage point and taking a long shot from that position. Versnel wants more than this: after walking through a space and having taken it into thoughtful consideration, he attempts to project his mental recollection of the image onto the ground glass of his camera.

Versnel also seeks an unorthodox approach when photographing furniture. He places the piece of furniture in the centre of the photo, isolates it from its surroundings, and tries to express its design as optimally as possible, by introducing a graphic pattern or a special perspective to the composition. One example of a basic composition typically encountered in Versnel’s photography of the 1950s and ’60s was a chair placed directly in front of the camera and taking up one-third of the image’s surface. By choosing a low vantage point, one is able to see—looking past the first chair—a second chair placed farther back in the space. Innovative camera angles and the often quite elegant solutions of this nature were new to this kind of professional photography in the 1950s. With this working method, Versnel was well suited to satisfy his clients’ demands. Through serial production, the Dutch furniture industry had begun to focus on a new and wider public. Accordingly, the photographs of these companies’ products had to draw people’s attention in a manner that differed from the past. Versnel’s photos have contributed greatly to the popularity of well-designed serial furniture. He photographed them not only on assignment for the furniture industry, but also for the Stichting Goed Wonen (‘Good Living Foundation’), which had assigned itself the enlightening task of advocating the ‘preferable’ interior to the general Dutch populace.

Jan Versnel’s archive is remarkably large, comprising from 150,000 to 200,000 shots. His archive is one of the most important collections of (interior) architecture, furniture, and home accessories in the Netherlands from the 1950s on. Versnel practices a form of professional photography that transcends the plain registration of the subject. He incorporates a personal touch by selecting unique camera angles and striking contrasts. Because of their artistic composition, Versnel’s photos are highly expressive.

Contemporary architectural photographers view Jan Versnel as the most important architectural photographer of the post-war years and see his work as a source of inspiration for their profession.

Documentation