Harrie de Fotograaf: Ambachten de Pijp 2015

A few years ago I was asked to photograph Ambachten de Pijp, a group of craftsmen based in my own Amsterdam neighbourhood.

I could simply have lined everyone up and taken a group photo. But that felt too bland, not creative enough, I wanted to do it my way. I wanted the image to say something about who these people were: craftsmen, working in Amsterdam, each with their own profession and personality.

That immediately brought me to the Dutch group portraits of the seventeenth century; that’s what I wanted to draw on.

I went to the Rijksmuseum and looked closely at paintings by Rembrandt, Bartholomeus van der Helst and others. What interested me most was not the historical clothing, but the way these painters organised large groups of people and, especially, how they used light. I’m in love with light!

Rembrandt has always fascinated me for that reason. His portraits are not about making people prettier than they are. They are about character, individuality and light, he does that so beautifully!

**Rembrandt: Syndics of the Drapers' Guild**

At first I looked at paintings such as The Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild and The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp. Beautiful paintings, but their groups were too small and too composed for what I had in mind.

Bartholomeus van der Helst: The Company of Captain Roelof Bicker and Lietenant Jan Michielsz Blaeuw

Bartholomeus van der Helst’s large group portraits came closer. I admire their richness and precision, but personally I find them rather formal. Everyone receives almost equal visual attention, and I don’t find that challenging. For my photograph I wanted more hierarchy, more tension and more things happening at the same time.

That brought me, rather reluctantly, to The Night Watch.

It is such an obvious reference that I initially wanted to avoid it. But the more I looked, the more useful it became. The painting contains many small stories, yet still has a clear centre of attention. Rembrandt uses light to guide your eye through the chaos.

**Gerrit Lundens version of 'The Night Watch'**

I also prefer the original composition of The Night Watch to the cropped version we know today. Parts of the canvas were removed in the eighteenth century so the painting would fit another location. Gerrit Lundens’ small contemporary copy gives us a good idea of the original framing. To me, that wider composition feels considerably more balanced.

For my own portrait I borrowed several ideas from Rembrandt: a strong centre of light, darker edges, different things happening simultaneously, and people of whom nobody, apart from Sasha (and a sneaky peeper), is looking at the camera.

But I did not want to recreate a seventeenth-century painting.

The craftsmen wore clothing and carried objects connected to their own trades. I asked everyone to wear relatively dark colours, which gave the group some unity, while their tools and individual expressions kept the picture lively.

The result is a photograph that works from a distance, but there is much more to see when you move closer.

In the centre, Sasha is one of the few people looking directly at the viewer. Hidden further back is another face peering out from between the others, a small reference to a similarly elusive figure in The Night Watch (is it Rembrandt himself?).

Elsewhere, small conversations and interactions are taking place everywhere. A dressmaker is holding a pair of scissors, craftsmen carry their tools, people look at each other rather than at the camera. These details are easy to miss on a phone screen, but for me they are precisely what makes the photograph (and the painting) work.

The final photograph became more than just a group portrait. It became a portrait of a lively group of people, with its own visual history and its own little stories.

A few years later, the photograph was selected for the Lang Leve Rembrandt exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, the museum’s most successful exhibition to date.

That still makes me smile: I went there to study Rembrandt, and in the end, my photograph, inspired by my various visits, ended up hanging in the Rijksmuseum itself. Not bad at all!

Thanks for taking the time to look at my 'making of' this group portrait – made in old Amsterdam by a modern craftsman in the style of the city's heritage. And, last but not least, I’d like to again thank Arjan, my assistant at the time, for helping me with this rather difficult photo.

On July 12th, 2019 the Amsterdam newspaper ‘het Parool’ wrote an article about my photo and me.

At the opening of the Lang Leve Rembrandt exhibition in the Rijksmuseum on July 15th, 2019 AT5 television network came to interview me, you can watch it here.

Making a group portrait with meaning