Biography

Discussion

Norbert Buchsbaum’s life can be divided into four clearly distinguishable periods: his youth in Scheveningen, the German occupation and the Holocaust, his first twenty-five years after the war working as a glass merchant and a graphic arts publisher, and a final period that commences in 1971, in which photography and writing were his primary activities. Buchsbaum is one of the few Dutch photographers that recorded his own life, albeit in part. In 1991, he published his memoires of the first twenty years of his life under the title Fotograaf zonder camera (‘Photographer without a Camera’).

Buchsbaum’s relatively happy and carefree youth in Scheveningen was followed by the German occupation and the holocaust, which left deep scars. Buchsbaum spent almost three of his teen years in various prisons and concentration camps. After the liberation, he learned that he was the only member of the Buchsbaum family to have survived the war. He himself escaped near death in early January 1945, when he decided to flee during a compulsory marching trek from Birkenau to Auschwitz. After wandering through Poland and the Soviet Union, Buchsbaum departed from Odessa on a military ship via Marseille to the liberated Netherlands, weighing only 37 kilos.

Upon his arrival in Amsterdam, Buchsbaum immediately went in search of Chaja Goldstein, a Yiddish singer and dancer. At Westerbork transit camp, he had sealed a friendship with Goldstein and become acquainted with a world he had never known before: ‘Key people in the camp, important people in life, intellectuals and artists, all formed a circle around her. I had never known that the conversations of which I had now become a part even existed. About literature, art, theatre, film, music. The only things I knew were jazz and a little bit about film, but this kind of intense conversation I had never experienced before. Our talks were also about politics. (…) My previous values began to topple. It turned out there was more to life than just field hockey, cricket, sailing, jazz, parties… and everything that was concerned with more profound level of thinking, an awareness of culture, the conscience of art, was not just for heads filled with ideas, who did nothing in life, were unfamiliar with the fast life and who knew nothing about the outdoors. I managed to get my hands on a couple of books. (…) A new world opened up to me.’ (Fotograaf zonder camera, p. 70).

After all the horrors that he had experienced and survived, Buchsbaum made the acquaintance of William Sandberg in the artistic and intellectual environment that centred upon Chaja Goldstein, and her husband, Theo Güsten, who had emigrated from Germany. Through Sandberg, Buchsbaum ended up working as a carpenter in the technical department of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. After this, he also worked for several months at the Amsterdam antique bookseller, Erasmus.

In 1946, Buchsbaum’s life seemed to take a definitive turn. In part to avoid being sent as a conscripted soldier to Indonesia, he and his cousin took over the family business in The Hague, the glass wholesale company, Buchsbaum. Due to the destruction from the war and the need for glass during the reconstruction of the Netherlands, business went well. But art continued to draw his interest. In early 1947, Buchsbaum came into contact with the bookbinder and framer, Armin Grossenbacher, who had founded the ‘Arta Vereinigung der Kunstfreunde Zürich’ (‘Arta Association of Art Friends Zurich’) in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1937. The goal of this association was to promote the production and sale of graphic art. By becoming a member, a person was able to choose out a single print of his own choice, but with the obligation of making at least one yearly purchase from specially made editions of 200 copies. With the assistance of Wim Brusse, Charles Eyck, Willem Sandberg, Mart Stam, and Jan Wiegers, Buchsbaum established a sister organisation of the Swiss Arta in the Netherlands. The first print was a lithograph by Paul Citroen, which was followed by countless editions of artists from the Netherlands and abroad. Starting in the second half of the 1970s, photographers’ works were also included. In its heyday at the end of the 1960s, Arta had approximately 2,000 members and a permanent exhibition space at Kazernestraat 58 in The Hague. In addition to Buchsbaum’s busy life as a glass merchant, Arta enabled him to maintain daily contact with artists and the world of art. These contacts served as an important stimulus for Buchsbaum to further develop his own literary and artistic activities.

In 1938, Buchsbaum was given a Zeiss Ikon 6×9 folding camera as a bar mitzvah gift in celebration of his religious coming of age. During his high school years, it was with this camera that photography developed into a hobby. Buchsbaum was permitted to use the darkroom at the Netherlands Lyceum with the aim of mastering the basic principles of chemical technique. However, there was nothing to indicate a future career in photography. In those years, Buchsbaum was thinking much more of what he described as: ‘(…) traveling, a sports convertible, a sailboat with a cabin, being able to fly, good friends, beautiful women – but, of course, there was never anyone with whom I could talk about these things. I knew that I was neither rich, nor a genius. Art and culture were out of the question.’ (Fotograaf zonder camera, p. 20) In the end, several of his boyhood dreams were indeed to become a reality: in the mid-1950s, Buchsbaum earned his pilot’s license; in the early 1960s, he bought a sailboat; and as a passionate automobilist, he also participated in several ‘Tulip rallies’.

Even after the war, photography still remained a hobby for quite some time. He initially worked with a Kine Exakta 35mm reflex camera and later with a Leica. Besides photos of friends and family, Buchsbaum commonly made portraits of colleagues while on business trips, which he would later send on as 18×24 cm enlargements. No negatives have survived from the years prior to 1963 and only one photo album. This album opens with a trip that Buchsbaum made to Sint Maartensvlotbrug (a village in North-Holland) with Fanny Kelk and her daughter, Aldo van Eyck, Eva Besnyö, Wim Brusse and Jan Rietveld. Via Yugoslavia, Italy and Madeira the trip then progresses on towards Berlin. At this stage, photography meant nothing more to Buchsbaum than a way to recall such personal experiences.

It was not with his photography, but rather with his poetry, that Buchsbaum made his first public appearance. In 1960 and 1964, two books of English-language poetry were brought out by Boucher, a publishing company in The Hague: From the Other Side and Some of These, both illustrated by Gust Romijn. These were followed in 1969 by a portfolio published by Arta, entitled Whistle of the Wind, comprising six poems that accompanied lithographs by Sam Middleton. For Buchsbaum, language was initially the most important means of expression. In an unpublished typescript written in 1982, The word, the image, and…, Buchsbaum worded it as follows: ‘One word links with another. Soon a pattern evolves – form is established that blends with an image. Now, at the point of an image as consequence of words following up on a single word, we may as well presume how this process can also begin with an image of form, a structure that results in a word. A sudden illusion becoming the focus of thought.’ At the close of this text, he writes: ‘Why does the image arouse our curiosity? Without our eyes we cannot see, like we cannot make a photograph without a camera. But we see actually only with our mind, and in the mind there is the interference of a will to see: it’s a processed image – processed by the brains.’ Around 1970, Buchsbaum came to the realisation that photography, in addition to language, was the perfect medium to express himself visually. From that moment onward, his poems and texts were accompanied solely by his own photographs.

In 1970 and 1971, Buchsbaum experienced two heart attacks. He was forced to cease his work as a glass merchant, though he would not leave the company for good until 1983. In order to gain back his strength following the second heart attack, Buchsbaum decided to spend time on the Greek island of Crete. It was there that he took the time to reassess his life as a businessman and to consider what he was going to do with the remainder of his life. This ultimately resulted in the publication of A heart attack; an asset in business? Nowhere was there any mention of a future as a photographer. Yet accompanying the text were more than twenty of his own photos that would set the tone for his later photographic work. Among the shots are five images capturing Cretan culture of the past, a single portrait, and images depicting the three elements: earth, water and air.

In 1974, Buchsbaum purchased a Hasselblad camera. From this moment on, photography began to play a more important role in his life: certainly after his first solo exhibition at Arta in 1976, and particularly after having found himself a pied-à-terre in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (Southern France) in that same year.

France, as the cradle of photography, as well as the yearly festival held in Arles, Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie (‘Arles International Photography Meeting’), together formed an important stimulus for the development of Buchsbaum’s photography. While a form of documentary photography was experiencing its heyday in the Netherlands at this time, in France Buchsbaum found those interested in and willing to discuss a more ‘timeless’ form of photography. In part thanks to his friend, Jacqueline Demassue, Buchsbaum felt completely at home in France, even though initially the activities at Arta carried on as before back in The Hague. Travelling was in his blood, and starting in the early 1970s, travel stories consequently provided an important opportunity for him to combine the publication of his own texts and images. Through the early 1980s, the weekly magazine, Elegance, provided him with various opportunities to do so. The trip around the world that Buchsbaum made in 1979 at the invitation of Paul Kormehl, a childhood friend then living in Australia, initially left its mark particularly on this magazine. This occurred partially in colour, whereas Buchsbaum preferred to photograph in black and white. Yet the same trip would also result in eight portfolios appearing in 1982, featuring black-and-white landscapes, accompanied by a photoreproduced poem written in Buchsbaum’s own handwriting. A selection of these were ultimately published in 1992 in Switzerland under the title: Voyages Images. Photographs and Eight Poems. Without direct references, the poems evoked the same atmosphere as the photos that were taken on Cape Saint-Hospice, Bali, around Bangkok, on Fiji, on the coast of Maui, in Australia and New York City. The book closes with three photographs of clouds.

With the exception of three photos made in the vicinity of Carnegie Hill in New York, all of Buchsbaum’s other photos are related to nature, which is continually subject to change. In these images, there is no trace of humanity to be seen. Through his war experience and heart attacks, Buchsbaum understands just how fragile life is. With the poetry that radiates from these photos of nature, he has found a visual equivalent.

The series of black-and-white shots made during Buchsbaum’s trip around the world signalled his maturity as a photographer. Photography was no longer one of many hobbies, but became a full-day activity from that point onward. Without the 6×6 Hasselblad camera that he had acquired in 1974, the nature shots taken during his trip around the world would have been technically unachievable. For Buchsbaum, however, the quality of the prints that he was able to produce in the darkroom was every bit as important as the quality of the negatives. With exceptional precision, he chose the optimal crop for every shot, using the best photo paper that was available, in the beginning mainly Ilford Gallery or Agfa Brovira. When examining the original prints, the details are almost tangibly present. This was often achieved in part through the use of selenium toning and local bleaching.

Buchsbaum developed and expanded his knowledge and competence in the area of darkroom technique in the second half of the 1970s. In the process, he made welcome use of the advice he received from Pete Petersen, typically in written form, whom Buchsbaum explicitly thanked at the back of Voyages Images. Originating from Germany, Petersen was the founder of the ‘Deutsche Photo Agentur’ (‘German Photo Agency’). He also worked as a photographer in the days of Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was a master in darkroom technique. In addition to Petersen’s technical advice, Buchsbaum’s familiarity with the history of photography is betrayed especially by his shots of nature. These photos recall the work of Meinard Woldringh and other representatives of Subjective Photography. Besides demonstrating knowledge of Edward Weston’s early work and Stieglitz’s cloud photos, Buchsbaum’s photos of nature also radiate his tremendous appreciation for Ansel Adams. It was therefore no coincidence that, during his stay in the United States in 1979, Buchsbaum visited with Adams to meet him and make his portrait.

Portraits played a significant role in Buchsbaum’s oeuvre. Remarkable if one considers that people are virtually always absent in his shots of nature and architecture. Buchsbaum’s portraits served a personal aim and generally involved acquaintances or (artist) friends. For this reason, he allowed himself a greater formal freedom in these photos. Buchsbaum himself pointed this out in a typed summary stating his most basic biographical info and what motivated him photographically, written in 1992: ‘What I like to see in my photographs is a sound structure, horizontally, vertically, or both; and this structure overcast by or draped in a large, rich, lush, variety of greys, with touches of high contrast here and there, and, finally, in the image, an opening to dream through… I have never thought and still never think of such a specification when taking a photograph or processing it. They just turn out that way, regardless of the subject; and this subject may be entirely visual or symbolical for something. With portraits – a large part of my work – comes an extra as a main theme: the person, that particular individual. He or she is holy at that moment, is then all that counts.’

The professional manner in which Buchsbaum handled his photography starting in the late 1970s very quickly led to a wide recognition both in the Netherlands and abroad. For an amateur photographer, this was certainly remarkable in the post-war years. In addition to the quality of his photographic work, the explanation for this also lay partly in his desire to travel, his knowledge of languages, and the social skills that he possessed, which were certainly beneficial to him business-wise. Buchsbaum’s international contacts were profitable not only for his own work, but also influenced Arta. His first exhibition received a follow-up in 1977 and 1978. In the second half of the 1970s, Buchsbaum also organised exhibitions at Arta for Lucien Clergue (not by chance, as he was one of the founders of the Arles photo festival), Willem Diepraam, Diederik van Goethem, Frederick Linck, Robby Pauwels and himself. At each of these exhibitions, a special edition photo was produced for Arta’s members. This was something new in the Netherlands, where printing photographs in a limited edition for art collectors was far from customary practice at this point in time. Moreover, through his contacts with the renowned American photo dealer, Harry Lunn, Buchsbaum was able to realise an exhibition at Arta in 1977 with the title, Foto’s over drie steden (‘Photos Above Three Cities’), featuring Berenice Abbott, Bill Brandt en Brassaï. Arta’s photographic activities most certainly contributed to the internationalisation and professionalization of the photographic climate in the Netherlands.

While the history of Dutch photography was yet to be written and virtually unknown outside the country’s borders, Buchsbaum – as a relative outsider and newcomer, particularly in France and Germany – received a respectable number of solo exhibitions and participated in various group exhibitions. His work was also included in countless numbers of internationally respected collections. For Buchsbaum, travelling and photography often went hand and hand. When both traveling and working with the Hasselblad became too difficult due to his physical circumstances, he turned to his older negatives. Not simply to make better prints of them, but also to experiment with new forms of presentation. Starting in the late 1980s, Buchsbaum took prints with different tonalities made from the one and the same existing negative and combined them with each other. He also made studies of form and structure, by conjoining prints from different existing negatives to create one single image. The 1991 exhibition at the Pennings Gallery in Eindhoven was the first time these experiments were shown to the public.

Norbert Buchsbaum spent his entire life seeking new ways to express himself creatively. In the beginning, the written word took priority over the visual image. But from the early 1970s onward, he was a photographer in heart and soul. While many photographers produce their most important work at an early age, in Buchsbaum’s case one may refer to a late ‘calling’. Even after having reached the age of seventy, Buchsbaum embraced experimentation and proved himself to be a photographer with a youthful spirit.

Documentation