Huis Marseille Amsterdam opens, now double in size

 

Hellen van Meene, Untitled (four elements)

With the recent reopening of both the rebuilt and modernized Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam seems to have emerged as the art capital of Europe.

From this last Saturday, Amsterdam's Huis Marseille photography museum opens, double in size. After a year long building project led by LEVS Architecten, the museum is now made up of two adjacent canal-side merchant’s houses linked together by three passageways on different floors. It is possible to stroll through no fewer than fourteen galleries, including a most remarkable period room: one of the very few Louis XIV-style reception rooms to have remained in such original condition in Amsterdam.

The enlarged museum opens with a new show - The Rediscovery of the World - which runs until December 8.
Huis Marseille say this:  What does photography mean today beyond the fact that it is an image-carrying medium? This question is not as odd as it sounds in an age entirely dominated by visual culture. Armed with digital cameras, smartphones, iPads and internet, these days anyone can make a photo and immediately distribute it worldwide. Analogue applications are increasingly being marginalized by a digital climate in which images are everywhere and belong to everyone. What can possibly remain of the artistic value of photography in this context?
Surprisingly enough a large group of Dutch photographers is devoting itself to this very question, with work directed specifically at the nature of photography itself. Renewed emphasis is being given to purely photographic aspects such as disclosure, light, colour, reflection and experiment. The core of the photographic medium itself forms the foundation of this impassioned artistic exploration, and it is ‘the rediscovery of the world’ through photography that forms the fascinating subject of this celebratory opening exhibition.

There will be many new works by fourteen Dutch photographers - Popel Coumou, Elspeth Diederix, Eddo Hartmann, Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Juul Kraijer, Tanya Long, Katja Mater, Hellen van Meene, Awoiska van der Molen, Ilona Plaum, Emma van der Put, Viviane Sassen, Scheltens & Abbenes and Simon van Til. The show will be well worth a look.

Juul Kraijer, Untitled, 2013