A Photographic Life - 83: Plus Erwin Olaf

In episode 83 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the passing of the photographer Terry O'Neill, visiting the the Prix Prictet exhibition, and how being given a camera can change your life. Plus this week photographer Erwin Olaf takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Dutch born Erwin Olaf emerged onto the international art scene with his series Chessmen, that won the Young European Photographer of the Year award in 1988. This was followed by an exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, with subsequent solo and group shows at major museums and galleries worldwide, but Olaf started his career as a photojournalist documenting the nightlife of the 1980s. In recent years he has developed his themes through the form of monumental tableaux, for which he adopts the role of director as well as photographer. His approach to his work has earned a number of commissions from institutions, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. He was awarded in 2006 the Photographer of the Year in the International Color Awards as well as the Netherlands’ prestigious Johannes Vermeer Award in 2011. Additional international awards include a Silver Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival and a Lucie Award for achievement in advertising, both in 2008. Olaf has screened video work at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum at FIT, New York; and Nuit Blanche Toronto, with a live score commissioned for his series Waiting. He has also projected his thirty-channel video installation L’Éveil onto the Hôtel de Ville for Nuit Blanche in Paris. In 2018, the Rijksmuseum acquired five hundred key artworks from Olaf’s forty-year oeuvre for their collection. He still lives and works in Amsterdam. www.erwinolaf.com If you have enjoyed this podcast why not check out our A Photographic Life Podcast Plus. Created as a learning resource that places the power of learning into the hands of the learner. To suggest where you can go, what you can read, who you can discover and what you can question to further your own knowledge, experience and enjoyment of photography. It will be inspiring, informative and enjoyable! You can find out here: www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast You can also access and subscribe to these podcasts at SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/unofphoto on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-photographic-life/id1380344701 on Player FM https://player.fm/series/a-photographic-life and Podbean www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/i6uqx-6d9ad/A-Photographic-Life-Podcast Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay can now be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd47549knOU&t=3915s. © Grant Scott 2019