This exhibition opens up one of many world’s largest pictures collections

I wasn’t anticipating to get emotional taking a look at a nude at 11am on a Wednesday morning. Especially not a nude taken in 1908. But there I used to be, on the primary flooring of the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, standing in entrance of Katharina Behrend’s self-portrait, and tears began welling up in my eyes. I used to be experiencing that feeling you typically get from viewing a sure expression in {a photograph} or studying a selected sentence in a diary when it hits you that the individuals previously weren’t simply serious-set faces dwelling in black and white, talking in formal iambic pentameter, however simply the identical as you and I. And for a second, you transcend time, the years collapse like an accordion, and also you occupy a singular area with this long-gone soul. 

On this event, the sensation arose as a result of, simply the night time earlier than, I’d taken an nearly an identical {photograph} to Behrend’s within the toilet of my resort room, as one is typically tempted to do in these conditions. Looking at this nude selfie, jogged my memory vividly of my very own, I felt fierce kinship with the artist and he or she turned as alive to me as any of the guests bodily there within the room. Overwhelmed by the depth of this sense, the tears started to pool.

Time, as an idea and as a actuality, is in every single place you take a look at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, which has reopened its doorways this month in a newly renovated area on Rotterdam’s harbourside. The constructing – initially a warehouse for imported espresso from Brazil – was one of many few buildings in Rotterdam to outlive the Second World War. In 2023, it was acquired as a donation by the Fotomuseum. Now, after a large restoration venture, it’s lastly prepared for the general public and combines exhibition, restoration and archives areas, a darkroom and artists’ residences.

With a set of greater than 6.5 million objects, the museum holds one of many largest pictures collections on this planet. What’s distinctive concerning the area is that the archive depot and restoration ateliers are as a lot part of the viewing expertise because the exhibitions, with giant home windows providing the possibility for guests to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into beforehand unseen areas, just like the restoration workshops the place conservators in gloves might be noticed hunched over mild tables learning time-damaged negatives.

As for the exhibitions themselves, the museum homes the Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography, a everlasting show of 99 pictures which traces the event of pictures within the Netherlands, from the invention of the medium round to the present digital age. Here, Viviane Sassen’s pictures sit alongside these by Anton Corbijn and Cas Oorthuys. Photographs of cultural figures like Tupac Shakur and JFK occupy the identical area as pictures from the Netherlands’ former colonies, together with the court docket of the sultan of Yogyakarta or Augusta Curiel’s documentation of Suriname. The crowd at a Feyenoord-Ajax match sit subsequent to passport photographs of Anne Frank, subsequent to a scene from post-coup Chile and, in fact, Behrend’s tear-inducing self-portrait. It’s a vibrant and numerous assortment that brings historical past to vivid life. And, whereas I didn’t personally see any of the opposite journalists on the press preview crying over the exhibition, I assume they had been all equally (if barely extra stoically) as moved as me. 

The museum additionally opens with two momentary exhibitions. Rotterdam in Focus: The City in Photographs 1843 – Now is a present devoted to town, tracing its historical past and altering panorama by way of greater than 300 pictures taken by each skilled and novice photographers. Awakening in Blue: An Ode to Cyanotype, in the meantime, celebrates the great thing about one of many oldest photographic strategies. Instantly recognisable by its deep-blue shade, cyanotypes are created by way of a sluggish course of requiring solely 4 parts – iron salts, water, mild and a floor – and no lens, which means nature and time develop into co-creators of the picture with the artist.

Alongside early examples by cyanotype pioneer Anna Atkins, the exhibition options work by 15 modern artists who’ve mixed this Nineteenth-century approach with new media and supplies to discover themes of ecology, the colonial previous and the physique as an archive. Suzette Bousema makes imprints of washed-up plastic, “future fossils”, whereas Sarojini Lewis makes use of the medium to problem and retell colonial tales, exploring the scars of deserted plantations in Suriname from feminist views.

An embroidered textile piece by artist Marijn Kuijper, titled Under No Circumstances, questions a Dutch regulation which, till 2014, banned anybody who modified their gender from having kids by way of sterilisation. The tapestry, which mixes quotations from the laws with cyanotypes of Kuijper with their baby, is displayed subsequent to a video venture that brings collectively household footage and journal excerpts to discover the identification of being a dad or mum, lover, and queer and trans particular person. Captivated by the story unfolding in entrance of me, it was solely after a number of minutes that I realised a photographer, there to snap pictures of the event, was snapping a number of of me watching the movie with, in fact, eyes full of tears.

Rotterdam in Focus: The City in Photographs 1843 – Now is working at The Nederlands Fotomuseum till 24 May, 2026.Awakening in Blue: An Ode to Cyanotype is working till 7 June 2026.