Artist: Dolf Kruger (1923-2015)

Amsterdam, Nieuwe Kerkstraat, Roeterseiland, May 1958.

Fine art pigment print, size 40x40cm.

Dolf Kruger (1923-2015) completed the final exams of the HBS in 1942, and until February 1943 he followed a course at the Nautical Academy in Amsterdam, after which he went into hiding. In the period 1945-1946 he starts with the start of the study Indology in Leiden, which is not completed.

Kruger learns to photograph in 1946-1947 as an autodidact. He gained practical experience with Maria Austria and Aart Klein from the Particam Photographers Collective, and in 1947-1948 he was apprenticed to Carel Blazer. He replaces Carel as cameraman for the film ‘Welvaart voor een nieuw Nederland’ (Prosperity for a new Netherland) for the Communist Party Netherlands under the direction of Paul Schuitema.

In 1948 he married Suze Henriët (Amsterdam, 3 December 1927). In 1948 – in permanent service with newspaper De Waarheid. In 1959, there is an exhibition of photographs of the miners’ strikes in the Borinage in the Kriterion cinema in Amsterdam, and in 1960 he receives a gold medal for his Borinage photographs at the Interpress-Foto exhibition in East Berlin.

From 1960 to 1983, together with his wife Suze Henriët, he works as a freelance photographer; he focuses on business and industrial photography and receives assignments from government and industry. In 1965, he received an assignment from Willem Sandberg, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, to compose a photo exhibition for the Vondelpark pavilion about the car in contemporary life under the title Autography. In 1961 he is the winner of the Silver Camera with a photo of mine strikes in the Borinage.

After his retirement in 1983 he settles in Sweden, where he dies in 2015.