Biography

Discussion

‘Better to be a person with “an edge” than one of the masses, as [Bernard] Eilers always said’, Truus Haasbroek-Hessels wrote in a letter to Johan Huijsen in 1954, in response to his endless self-criticism. Huijsen was anything but average: he is certain to have been a man who was fickle, difficult, and not without vanity. Despite his wilful and volatile nature, Huijsen was somewhat conservative in his choice of photographic themes and stylistic notions, preferring art photos of streetscapes and genre scenes. He experimented with many different techniques, which gives his photography a certain vivacity.

Johan Huijsen came from a photography family. His father was a portrait photographer in Hoorn. Johan assisted his father in the production of large quantities of carte-de-visite portrait photos. In 1896, he became an apprentice to the portrait photographer Max Cosman. This was apparently the only training that Huijsen ever received. In addition to practical experience, he was able to sharpen his principles and techniques through photography associations and trade literature.

Business-wise, Huijsen’s success was far from consistent. During the early days of his photographic career, he was not alone. Prior to establishing himself independently, he worked for three years in a partnership with Gerrit Leenheer, starting in 1903. For over thirty years—from 1906 to 1937—Huijsen ran his own photographic studio at Willemsparkweg 211 in Amsterdam. Although his portrait studio was initially successful, the consequences of the economic crisis hit his business hard. In 1932, Huijsen took over the well-established studio of the portrait and art photographer A.S. Weinberg, located in Groningen. Due to an unfortunate series of events, this endeavour was destined to be brief. In 1944, Huijsen presumably entered employment with the photographer H.G. Beerman in Dordrecht in 1934. Both men shared a fondness for fine printing (the so-called ‘edeldruk’) processes, which Beerman may possibly have learned from Huijsen. From 1946 to 1948, Huijsen collaborated with Wouter Dijkstra in Vlaardingen.

According to Leenheer & Huijsen’s brochure of 1904, it was preferable for a client to be photographed in his own surroundings, in order to obtain the most characteristic image. For a photographer with a sufficient knowledge of lighting, retouching was superfluous. Huijsen likewise viewed cardboard mounts full of advertising as undesirable. These principles reflect the ideas and practices then propagated by the early members of the NFK (Nederlandsche Fotografen Kunstkring, ‘Netherlands Photographers Art Society’): Carl Emil Mögle, Piet J. Clausing, H.F.J.M. Deutmann, and Helena Goude. Like Huijsen, these professional photographers aspired to perfection, quality, and purity as opposed to the profit-driven, rush job mentality of numerous competitors. Huijsen alone went one step further than his professional colleagues, however, by producing not only the carbon print, but also fine prints, which were thought to be photographically less ‘pure’. For portrait commissions, Huijsen still usually applied the less time-consuming technique of carbon printing. As late as 1933, he advertised ‘artistic and permanent portrait photos in salon format’, with ‘permanent’ undoubtedly referring to the carbon printing technique.

Huijsen made his own personal contribution to the flourishing of the art photography movement in the Netherlands. In his professional practice as well, he strove for the same high aesthetic standard. Although by no means a trailblazer, he was most certainly a productive participant. In 1904, Huijsen and Leenheer wrote the brochure Moderne kunstfotografie (‘Modern Art Photography’). For their 1905 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, a brochure was handed out to visitors at the entrance of the exhibition hall. The ideas put forth in this brochure closely correspond to Huijsen’s autonomous oeuvre. According to the brochure, photographic technique was to be based on a pure striving for truth and naturalness. It was this striving that distinguished the ‘modern art photographer’ from the ‘generally applied method [of] machine-manufactured little prints, presented in theatrical fashion, consequently as a whole expressionless and unnatural in their representation.’ Theme, technique, and further execution: everything was to be ‘serious in mood’. In the world of Dutch art photography, however, ‘mood’ (‘stemming’) was a word applied indiscriminately. According to De Camera, the photography magazine of the NCvFK (Nederlandse Club voor Fotokunst, ‘Netherlands Club for Photo Art’)—the association in which Huijsen, Boer, and Loeb were all active—claimed that art photography was ‘(…) above all an embodiment of impressions [and] moods that come to us through objects’. Every one of Huijsen’s photographic images served as a reference to a generally felt love for the picturesque, for timelessness, and for melancholic sentiment. Such notions were weapons in his battle to attain general recognition from the Dutch art world. Huijsen’s perfect mastery of photographic technique helped him in his efforts to achieve this goal. Institutions that served as excellent examples of such recognition, as cited by Huijsen and Leenheer, were the Belgian national museum, which had an art photo in its possession (in all likelihood a reference to the Belgian government’s controversial acquisition of Steichen’s photo The Black Vase in 1902), and the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, with its collection of gum prints.

In 1908, Huijsen exhibited several genre scenes at the Internationale Tentoonstelling van Fotografische Kunst (‘International Exhibition of Photographic Art’) in Amsterdam. The critics found that the naturalism of his sickbed genre scene, entitled Pauvre et Malade (‘Poor and Ill’), was inappropriate for photography. They likewise maintained that, had this work been painted, a dramatic subject of this nature could very well have been artistic and elevating.

Fourteen years later, Huijsen managed to receive positive reviews in response to several Höchheimer gum prints depicting various Amsterdam street types at the exhibition De Mensch (‘Humanity’), held in 1922. Huijsen still preferred loaded themes such as destitute vagrants, a sickly old woman, or a toiling worker. Like many artists and art photographers, he associated poverty and labour with a kind of picturesque beauty. By emphasising the external appearance of the existing social structures, it was a form of photography that did nothing to increase social awareness.

Huijsen’s combination gum prints abstracted scenes of everyday life, thus transforming them into timeless and well-conceived compositions. He introduced dramatic lighting effects and on occasion radical retouching to cover up distracting flaws and to strengthen surfaces. While Huijsen reproached retouching when it came to portrait photography, he felt not the slightest hesitation when it came to eliminating entire figures from a photo to suit his painterly intentions.

The majority of Huijsen’s cityscapes are photos that capture the mood of Amsterdam in the rain, the reflecting water in the canals, and the sparsely lit streets by night. Rarely did he incorporate people in his images. In his images of ghettos and street professions, he sought to portray people at work. In 1916, he displayed several dozen ‘art photos’ at the exhibition Het verdwijnend Amsterdamsch ghetto in beeld (‘The Disappearing Amsterdam Ghetto in Pictures’), chiefly in the category of ‘working-class life’. Photos such as De bedelares (‘The Woman Beggar’), De schoenpoetser (‘The Shoeshine Man’), and Moederliefde (‘Motherly Love’) could be purchased at the exhibition for four guilders each. To avoid crowds and unwanted attention, Huijsen often collected his visual material during photo jaunts in ‘Amsterdam at its darkest’. When visiting impoverished neighbourhoods, he dressed himself up as a ‘poor working man’s type’, to avoid being mistaken for a housing inspector. At such times, he hid his camera inside a bundle of newspapers. Huijsen was very aware of the contrast between this photography—this kind of life—and his professional existence as a photographer making portraits of what he referred to as the ‘best’ classes: ‘then one occasionally pauses to consider the great divides presented in this life!’

A number of Huijsen’s cityscapes are noticeably ‘modern’ for a photographer today known as an art photographer, based on the fact that he worked with fine printing processes. These are bromide prints from the 1920s depicting images of street life in Amsterdam, with people rushing to cross the street, standing in a queue, or having their shoes polished by ‘Isaac on the Dam Square’. Like Bernard Eilers, Huijsen introduced a tension to the city’s historical decor and the dynamism of the modern age, as expressed by advertising and motorised vehicles.

In 1932, Huijsen submitted ‘pigmo’ prints (an older term for bromoil prints) to the exhibition Klank en Beeld (‘Sound and Image’), with birch and beech tree trunks as his subject. In the book Schoonheid in de fotografie (‘Beauty in Photography’), W.H. Idzerda spoke in positive terms about the play of light and dark in treetops and leaves and about movement in relation to the surrounding environment. It seems as if Huijsen had followed Idzerda’s precepts in his approach to atmosphere and other aspects. While his photos lack the biting sharpness of the ‘New Photography’, Huijsen was by no means entirely oblivious to the new interest in objective details and texture. His nature photos taken at the start of the century are more anecdotal in character, based on their timing and the choice of title. In expectation is the title he bestowed upon an atmospheric image of a bench in the woods, flooded by a mysterious play of light. In a photo taken in a farmyard, he catches a white chicken traversing a dark streak of shadow. Huijsen frequently photographed mooring posts and railway bridges as signs of trade and industry. They were photographed as neutral forms in an integrated whole, made up of horizontals, verticals, and diagonals, while at the same time preserving the melancholic mood.

An advertisement for Huijsen’s studio that dates from circa 1933—today preserved in the collection of the Print Room in Leiden—lists reproductions, interiors, advertising photos, and photomontages. The advertising message itself has been executed in photomontage: layers of visual information piled one on top of the other. Nonetheless, one finds not a single trace of the dynamic encountered in photomontages produced by the new objectivist photographers. The few examples of Huijsen’s commissioned work known to exist are clearly less characteristic than his autonomous photography.

Complex photographic techniques and processes were more to Huijsen’s liking. He applied many of them, wrote about them, and demonstrated his findings. As an art photographer, he saw the fine printing processes as an important extension of photography’s potential. With regards to the 1905 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Piet Clausing wrote that Huijsen and Leenheer’s enlargements were lacking in textural expression. He also rejected the pretentiousness of these fine prints: ‘(…) a photographer simply cannot produce a Mathijs Maris’. Huijsen explained why these fine printing processes appealed to him in his description of the oil print: ‘a wonderful technique, that allows one to build up the entire image, to accentuate strengths, and to preserve certain details.’ He appears to have had no preference for any one specific technique. He often printed the same negative repeatedly with different processes, ranging from a bromide print with a broad tonal scale, to a heavy, high contrast fine print, and in a variety of tints. In Huijsen’s view, technical versatility was essential to craftsmanship and creativity in photography. In his autonomous work, he produced combination prints and Höchheimer gum prints, as well as bromoil and bromoil ink prints.

In the late 1930s, Huijsen even made a futile attempt to spark the interest of the Belgian company ‘Gevaert photo-producten N.V.’ (‘Gevaert Photo Products’) in the commercial production of special papers for carbon printing.

Huijsen applied his technical knowledge not only in his autonomous work. He also used all kinds of experiments to attract professional assignments. An advertisement dating from circa 1933 (with the heading: ‘I make artistically and technically well-made photographic work’) listed the following products: new permanent photo on airmail, stationery or a silk handkerchief, ‘Reproductions of the most difficult originals’, photomontages, colour slides on glass, and artistic art prints. Notwithstanding, all of these technical exploits brought him little financial gain. Huijsen’s years of travelling to learn the different processes, as well as the costly materials they required, proved to be a major burden.

The ability to create a photographic image that underwent no change, and which can then be passed down to future generations, was an aspiration that Huijsen shared with many of his nineteenth-century predecessors. For prints on paper—as well as the aforementioned ‘art photography’ fine prints—various photomechanical processes were available, including the Woodburytype, a nineteenth-century technique applied to other durable materials. Huijsen was extremely interested in experiments of this kind. Even his letterhead in the 1950s, after he settled in Vlaardingen, still read: ‘J. Huijsen, art photographer and photographic ceramic company’. By means of the carbon printing technique, he was able to reproduce photographic images on glazed tiles and plates that had to be baked at 1020º C. He also advertised gravestone plates made from marbarite, a glass sort that was baked at 650º C. According to a small manuscript, entitled ‘Photo Invention by J. Huijsen. The making of photos on porcelain, earthenware, marbarite, glass, etc.’, his method was distinctly different from the older powder processes because it preserved half-tints. This he achieved by using an emulsion of gelatin and enamel. The gelatin base and the possibility of half tones were likewise traits of the Woodburytype. This technique, however, had the one limitation that it had to be executed in large quantities in order to be cost-productive. Huijsen’s invention made it possible to satisfy the criterion of permanence even when desired only a single print: ‘Naturally, everything is indestructible.’

An application for this transporting technique, related to carbon printing, was Huijsen’s method of transferring signatures or fingerprints onto a tile or stone with a small strip of collodion film. He recorded this somewhat idiosyncratic method, which he applied until 1957, on paper for the Leiden University Print Room. He also provided the formulas for a number of his fine printing processes.

Photography produced on durable materials ultimately cost Huijsen a great deal of time and money. He had no oven of his own. His enamel was obtained in Ghent, Belgium, and from the company Regout in Maastricht. For his ceramic works, he used both other people’s negatives and reproductions, e.g. the drummer from Rembrandt’s Night Watch transferred onto glass, or Truus Haasbroek-Hessels’ floral still lifes and a photo by the photographer Meijboom onto marbarite.

Huijsen was an active (board) member of numerous photography associations, eventually switching from one to the other, however, when no longer feeling at home. He cancelled his membership at the NFK (Nederlandsche Fotografen Kunstkring, ‘Netherlands Photographers Art Society’) to join up with the NFV (Nederlandsche Fotografen-Vereeniging, ‘Netherlands Photographers Association’). Upon perceiving a lack of activity, however, he then made his way back to the NFK. In the 1920s, Huijsen presented lectures on various topics to members of the NFPV (Nederlandse Fotografen Patroonsvereeniging, ‘Netherlands Photographers’ Guild) and the NAFV (Nederlandse Amateur Fotografen Vereniging, ‘Netherlands Amateur Photographers Association’).

In addition to these memberships, Huijsen was involved as a committee member in the planning of the ‘Nederlandsch Fotografisch Museum’ (‘Netherlands Photography Museum’) from 1912 on. Following a break in the committee’s activities during World War I, the museum’s small collection of photographs was transferred to the BNAFV (Bond van Nederlandse Amateur Fotografen Verenigingen, ‘Federation of Netherlands Amateur Photographers Associations’), which was later absorbed by the Leiden University Print Room. It was there that Huijsen, then in his advanced years, gave tours of the collection to fellow photographers from Belgium and the Netherlands.

Still holding on to the principles he had embraced at the turn of the century, in the 1920s Huijsen dared to confront his colleagues and former friends, among them Adriaan Boer, in the magazines Bedrijfsfotografie (‘Corporate Photography’) and De Fotograaf (‘The Photographer’). The motivation for his articles were topics such as a comparison with the organisation and quality of professional photography in Germany and the improvement of vocational education in photography. Huijsen’s personal opinion and his substantive arguments often became confused. In response to such polemics, Huijsen’s former colleague C.G.L. Leenheer wrote in 1931: ‘My colleague, Huijsen, is still (besides a writer of articles) a genuinely good craftsman, with a big, pure love of his profession. He could spend his time much better and more productively doing just that.’

Huijsen had various pupils. He names M.G. Meyboom as one of the last. In 1957, Huijsen wrote a letter to the Leiden University Print Room stating that, due to his advanced years, he was dropping all future plans to teach. With the term ‘pupils’, we may presume he was referring to any individual initiated incidentally by Huijsen into one or more of his printing techniques. In another case, he wrote, as well to the Print Room in Leiden, that he had instructed his friend and art photographer G. Middendorp in the Höchheimer gum printing process.

With the formation of the collection of the Leiden University Print Room, Huijsen recommended art photographers such as the ‘1st class’ Truus Haasbroek-Hessels, Mathieu Koch, Martien Coppens, and Godfried de Groot. While it is known that Huijsen obtained some of his technical knowledge and materials from abroad, no information is available regarding his foreign contacts.

Huijsen was wilful, both in his work and as an individual. His inability to accept a kind of photography that was impersonal, by no means suggests he was an innovator. In a sense, Huijsen—as an early art photographer—was a victim of his own running start. His notions of the picturesque elements in art, as well as his artisanship, bound him for many years to art photography, of which he was one of the main advocates in the Netherlands. The diversity of the techniques with which he managed to actualise these notions is what makes Huijsen intriguing.

In the 1920s and ’30s, Huijsen guardedly incorporated the changes initiated by the New Objectivist photographers. This can especially be seen in his cityscapes, but also in the topics of his lectures, with titles such as ‘Het fotografisch affiche’ (‘The Photographic Poster’). Huijsen never sought to connect with this ‘modern’ group. For this, he is likely to have perceived himself as being too much of an art photographer.

Documentation