Summary : Mirelle Thijsen Het Bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965

Bedrijfsfotoboek

The 'commemorative company photo book' occupies a prominent position in the history of postwar Dutch photography. Company photo book is not a common term and its definition is problematic. A company photo book is considered to be a one-off publication - usually in the form of a commemorative volume - whereby a Dutch business company commissions a special team to document or depict the company as a whole or particular aspects of it. In the most outstanding examples this team consists of an experimental writer-poet, one or more well-known photographers and a prominent graphic designer. The collaboration between photographers, graphic designers and authors, on the one hand, and patrons from the world opf business and industry on the other, forms an essential characteristic of this genre.

The significance of these company photo books for the history of Dutch photography is substantial. Partly because of the genre, photographers could survive and accumulate a body of work. What is more, because the company photo books represented the most lucrative and prestigious assignments for photographers in the postwar years, the phenomenon contributed to the fact that they became trend-setting. Furthermore, the vanguard figures involved were from the humanistic tradition in documentary photography and often had leading functions in the professional organizations of photographers after the Second World War. These photographers determined the image of Dutch business and industry in the postwar period of reconstruction. Also as a part of the history of companies and in a cultural-historical respect, these photo books constitute an important source of information about the development of Dutch industry, business and social life. A facet of Dutch industrial history is literally made 'visible' in the company photo books.

At the same time the genre reflects the self-image of the industrial patrons an image of working and living communities which was often exceptionally optimistic. Various sorts of books preceded the genre. The roots of the company photo book can be found in 19th century books with glued-in original photographs, exhibition and product catalogues, company photo albums and photographically illustrated commemorative volumes. Although commissions for photo books from the business world were scarce in the interbellum period, this period is mainly crucial for the creation of the genre. It was during these years that the New Photography laid the aesthetic basis for the postwar company photo book. Important impulses came from international contacts with, among others, members of the Bauhaus and the way they used photography in avant-garde publications.

The New Photographers extolled the vitality of the new industrially manufactured products for the benefit of the masses in company catalogues, brochures and special publications. What was propagated here was not so much artistry but rather a progressive, social message. From a social perspective, the New Photographers thought it was necessary to use modern techniques in order to provide information about products and that the most suitable means for this were the stylistic characteristics of the New Photography (photomontage, worms eye view, diagonal lines). This socially conscious view could later find application in company photo books.

The social-documentary tradition in photography was partly responsible for the rise of the genre. The first photo books in which a burgeoning humanistic vision of man and society can be seen appeared in the last quarter of the 19th century. In the first decades of the 20th century an important group of photographers adhered to realism. They undertook extensive projects in which daily life, codes of dress and behaviour and professions were systematically examined and recorded in book form. Precedents of the postwar company photo books can be seen in both the iconographic aspects as well as the social function of such photo books as Anlitz der Zeit (August Sander, 1929) and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Walker Evans, 1941). But the matrix for the rhetorical image and the humanistic view of (working) people in the company photo book was provided by the catalogue of the famous international exhibition The Family of Man (1955).

The informalisation of society after the Second World War is reflected in the genre. From the time of early industrial photography up to and including the documentary-humanist tradition in the company photo book, a shift can be perceived in the visual vocabulary from 'detachment' toward 'involvement'. Detached imagery in photographs of men in hats and overalls - underlining the anonymity and uniformity on the shop floor and portraits of directors emphasising the hierarchy within the company - were replaced in the Reconstruction years by probing photographs of youth, world events and travel as representations of dynamism, speed and progress. The visual vocabulary had become more direct and at the same time the increasing use of run-off photographs was indicative of growing respect for the autonomy of the photographic image. In the course of the 1950s detachment gave way to informal directness in language use, while photography and design bore witness to social involvement with working people on the basis of varying perspective and camera angle.

Certain prototypes - especially striking examples from the genre's hey-day - reveal how a contemporary and humanistic vision of the theme 'man and work' is visualised and dramatised in a visual structure, whether or not in narrative form. The way in which a story is told visually is ultimately determined by the direction and nature of the designer. Four types of company photo books can be distinguished on the basis of formal and aesthetic characteristics: the visual narrative, the filmic scenario, the photo-typo-language and the visual rhyme.

Oranje Nassau Mijnen (1953) is a typical example of a visual narrative. This book about Limburg miners by the photographer and doctor Nico Jesse is narrative: there is a linear story (a day-in-the-life of, from raw material to final product) and a chronological structure in series of photographs. Typically of such early postwar photo books of this type, it reflects a moralistic and rhetorical portrayal of mankind.

The filmic scenario - that is to say, a sequence of photographs in the manner of a film and often based on a written scenario - is prominent in the legendary photo book vuur aan zee (1958) compiled by the designer Jurriaan Schrofer for Hoogovens in Ijmuiden.

The synthesis of photography and typography is pivotal in the third type, the photo-typo-language. 100 Jaar Grasso (1958), compiled by Benno Wissing for an engineering works in Den Bosch, illustrates postwar experiments in this area. The commemorative book is a distinct example of high-quality printing and dynamic typography.

An infrequently seen type of company photo book is that organised according to visual rhyme by means of an associative arrangement of existing visual material. A typical example is the paperback De trein hoort erbij (1964) published by the Dutch railways. Its kaleidoscopic mixture of photographs, drawings and text announces the hybridisation that entered the genre in the mid-1960s.

Very diverse collaborations underlay these company photo books. Most of the books were produced during the Reconstruction period by teams, a notable phenomenon since in the same period various professional groups were differentiating themselves from the old all-round prewar applied artists. The new form of organisation (the Association of Practitioners of Applied Arts in the GKf Federation) and the management of artists working in applied arts were two of the factors that contributed to this professionalisation. Professional attitudes were changing, the prestige of applied artists was growing and the profession of designer and photographer was gradually becoming emancipated. From the mid-1950s certain industries showed remarkable interest in photo books about the activities of their own companies. A special team brought together by a prominent printer-publisher provided the text, image and book design. The printer-publisher also supervised production of the company photo book. Collaboration between photographer and designer in the realization of these books was remarkably constant. The breeding ground for this collaboration was the GKf. Some companies, particularly in the graphic industry, have a tradition in the area of initiating and producing prestigious printed matter. After the war, companies such as PTT, Bruynzeel and Hoogovens continued this tradition of promoting and distributing art and culture. A decisive role was played here by particular individuals, prominent figures on the Board of Managing Directors, who had a considerable affinity with expressions of contemporary art and culture and who moved in artists' circles. Progressive industrial patrons began working together with experimental writers and poets from the Vijftigers Movement in order to produce representative publications. The Vijftigers mainly became involved in the production of company photo books via GKf members belonging to unions of graphic artists and photographers. They undertook this for different reasons. One aspect was that experimental poetry was associated with the documentary nature of contemporary photography: both groups wanted to record the present in word as well as image, aiming to proclaim a correspondingly humanistic point of view. The collaboration between authors, photographers and designers on the one hand and like-minded industrial leaders on the other, reached its peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s, resulting in company photo books that can be termed avant-garde. But it is principally from a deeply-rooted sense of solidarity that left-leaning industrial patrons and like-minded artists regarded the production of books as a social act.

After the culmination of the Reconstruction the genre began to decline. A more hybrid type of company photo book came into fashion, simultaneously with the rise of design and advertising bureaus. This development brought along with it a number of shifts: the printer was no longer the one who assembled the team and commissioned the artists; instead, project developers within the graphic industry began to form specialised teams. The nature of the collaboration also changed, new commissioning situations having been created through cooperation between photographers, designers, writers and industrial patrons in the realization of the company photo book. The artistic value of the company photo book levelled off in these years and the annual report ultimately replaced it.

Two occasional publications in the field of high-quality printing and book production offer particular insight into the contemporary appreciation and reception of the genre: the Christmas issue of the Drukkersweekblad and the jury report of De best verzorgde vijftig boeken. These prestige objects function as a touchstone of quality and as a mark of recognition within graphic design circles. Company photo books, however, were solely judged on their graphic merits and seldom on their photographic and literary qualities. The relatively low appreciation of photography can, like the discrepancy between the reputation of the graphic designers and the photographers, be historically explained. From the outset photographers have had to struggle in securing a place within the world of fine art. In contrast to graphic designers who had already distinguished themselves early within the applied arts movement and whose status is in part due to that of typographers, from whom they partially stem and whose status has been recognized since time immemorial. For substantial time after the war photographers continued to hold a minority position as GKf members within the graphic sector with which they were closely associated, yet from the mid-1950s there were signs of an undercurrent where the autonomy of photography was attempted.

And although the company photo book declined during the 1960s and 1970s, the genre enjoys considerable appreciation today, as can be seen by the high prices such books fetch in the market. Moreover, there is growing interest from a photo-historical point of view. Company photo books were also produced after 1965, but the situation has drastically altered and perspectives on photography have changed. In a time span of 40 years which saw not only the institutionalisation of photography and establishment of a commissioning policy, but also the crucial role of the government in the process of consciousness-raising among photographers and formation of the first company photo collections, the postwar company book has been gradually replaced by books prepared by autonomous artists in which contemporary business culture and the decline of certain industries are documented. Whereas the postwar company photo books were primarily public relations instruments, originating from a social-democratic spirit and in the best cases of an avant-garde character, the present-day versions are not at all similar. The social need for the genre is now small.

For the purpose of an inventory of the genre, a database has been developed. The books represented in it are classified chiefly with the aim of documenting bibliographical details. The importance of such a catalogue of the genre is accentuated by the fact that company photo books are difficult to trace given they are dispersed widely across company and photo archives, private collections and libraries in the Netherlands.

Mirelle Thijsen Het Bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965 Professionalisering van fotografen in Nederland