In celebration of his eightieth birthday, the Kunsthal Rotterdam is proud to honour photographer Eddy Posthuma de Boer (born in 1931 in Amsterdam) with an exhibition of his work.
The photographer has visited over eighty countries during his fifty-five year long career and has captured images of hundreds of people in countless situations. The personal portraits in the exhibition illustrate his deep connection with ‘ordinary' people. Posthuma de Boer photographs people from a humanistic perspective, subtly illustrating other people's lives. This exhibition focuses on portraits from three different cultures, their similarities and mutual equality occupying centre stage.
Travel photography
Posthuma de Boer has always loved travelling and is still active as a photographer. Over the years, he has built up an extensive archive of travel photographs from all over the world, forty of which have been selected for this exhibition: portraits taken in Africa, America and Asia and which are characterised by their frontal composition. Posthuma de Boer illustrates the people in his photographs with empathy and from carefully considered perspectives.
The background and the context work as a double layer exposing their culture and giving the people in the images even greater identity. At the same time, his personal observations show primarily the similarities between people, even though the photographs have been taken at locations thousands of miles apart. Impressions of where and how we live, whether and in what way we are rich or poor, how we experience our different faiths, and our relationship with animals; this photographic study shows that we are familiar with everything that is human, wherever we may be in the world.
