Jacob Olie was a Dutch amateur photographer. He is seen as the man who captured and archived 19th century Amsterdam (capital of Holland). He started with a selfbuild camera and wet glass negatives that needed to be developed within minutes after exposure. Later he used the old box with a new lens and a dry gelatine glass plates that didn't need direct development, but weighed a ton (figure of speech).
The strenghth of many of his images is showing city life and urban development. Both the poor and rich are portrayed and humans play a role in many images. Many of his images would fit in the B&W portaits as well, be it environmental portraits.
If you are interested in historic photography, check this site out for some examples:
Amsterdam's council archive - Jacob Olie
It is in Dutch, but you don't need to know the language to look at the images. You can start a slideshow by clicking auto. Every 15 seconds another image is loaded. You can also do it yourself by clicking "volgende" = next and you go back by clicking "vorige" = previous.
You can also use the menu at the right to get pages with thumnails on specific subjects:
"Straten en Pleinen" = Streets and Squares
"Straattaferelen" = Situations on the Streets
"Nieuwe Bouwkunst" = Urban Renewal
"Rondom de Zandhoek" = 'Zandhoek' area
"Schepen en Scheepswerven" = Ships and the dockyards
"Water in de binnenstad" = Water in the city centre
"De Nieuwe Kerk" = The new church
"Molens" = Mills
"Buiten Amsterdam" = Outside Amsterdam
"Dagelijks Leven" = Daily live
"Portretten" = Portraits
"Over Jacob Olie" = small dutch biography without pictures.
I own one book about his photography and the quality in the book is much higher. I find it a pleasure to browse trough and compare it to modern situations. It is one of the reasons why I started with photography, but I am not very good at it yet and haven't done much in this line of work yet.
Hope you enjoy it. It is a shame that the site is in Dutch only. :-(
Straattaferelen is one of my favorites, there is so much to see in each image.
Message edited by author 2002-12-23 15:16:05.
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