artistarchives.eu

"Pieter Boersma (Amsterdam 1945) is not only a many sided and socially involved photographer, but he also played a significant role in Dutch photography, as chairman of the Association of Dutch Photographers (GKf) and cofounder of Netherland's Photo Archive (Nederlands Fotoarchief). From the start of his career Boersma has captured subjects with his camera that he would follow for many years. Jazz is his first great love - in the sixties he was the first Jazz-cello player in the Netherlands and performed a.o. with Willem Breuker and Han Bennink - since then his jazz photographs appeared in the weekly Vrij Nederland and the magazine 'Jazz Wereld'. Next to that Boersma was active in the world of visual art: making artist's portraits, and photographing the alternative theater circuit. In the seventies and eighties of last century he was involved in the social side of the build environment: civil actions, evictions of squatters and daily events of Amsterdam activist's circles. He also showed the desolate reality of the new suburban quarters of that time. Since 1987 Boersma photographed for the Dutch Antiapartheid Movement and for the Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa in southern Africa. His own style is summarized by him in the words: "when something is wretched, it should look wretched."

SOURCE: de Verbeelding publishers