I spent nearly three hours at the Ed van der Elsken exhibition at the Rijksmuseum. Before visiting, I knew very little about him. I knew he was a Dutch photographer and that he had photographed people on the street. That was about it.

What I didn't expect was that within the first few minutes of entering the exhibition, I would be transported back more than a decade, to a personal memory in a market in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.

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All pictures were taken on June 17th, 2026, at the exhibition Preview with an iPhone 14 Pro.

The exhibition begins with a video. I watched it three or four times. In the video, Van der Elsken walks through a market with his camera. He approaches people closely, photographs them, smiles, exchanges a few words, and moves on. There was something about the way he interacted with people that immediately caught my attention. As I watched him move through the market, I was reminded of an assignment I received during the Foundation Workshop in Mexico many years ago. My task was simple: photograph a local market.

At first, I found the market in San Miguel de Allende overwhelming. A market is chaos. Everything is happening at once. Every stall, every worker, every customer has their own story. The challenge is not finding something to photograph. The challenge is deciding what story to follow.

I remember spending time in the meat section watching workers process deliveries. I remember a flower stall where a mother sold flowers while a father fed chocolates to their child. I remember climbing into a garbage truck after convincing the workers that I genuinely wanted to understand their world from the inside. Years later, those are the moments I still remember, because they changed the way I saw people.

One of my mentors at that workshop gave me advice that has stayed with me ever since. "Go close. Smile. The biggest smile you can. People welcome you when you approach them with humility."

Watching Van der Elsken in that market video, I realized I was seeing the same philosophy in action. As photographers, we often talk about lenses, composition, light, and technique. Yet what I saw in that video had very little to do with any of those things. It was about trust. Trust is difficult to explain, but easy to recognize. You can see it in people's eyes or feel it during the first moments of a conversation.

As a photographer, I often know within the first few minutes of a session whether trust is beginning to form. That is one reason I stopped offering very short sessions. The first ten minutes are often spent building comfort. The real photographs happen afterwards.

When I photograph weddings, I usually meet couples beforehand. We sit down for a coffee or a drink and talk about life. My questionnaires ask questions that are not always directly related to photography. The goal is not information. The goal is connection. The photographs are often the visible result of trust that was built long before the camera was raised. Watching Van der Elsken reminded me how much I value that process.

His photographs may have been made in different places and decades, but the human connection behind them felt familiar. As I continued through the exhibition, another thought kept returning. A large part of my current work revolves around vacation photography. I photograph proposals, families, couples, and travelers exploring Amsterdam. I love this work, but I also realized something during those three hours: I have become comfortable.

In vacation photography, I often know the locations well. I know where the light falls. I know what compositions work. I know what clients are likely to love. There is beauty in that experience, but there is less discovery than in the documentary work I did years ago. The exhibition reminded me of that feeling, and not because it made me want to become a street photographer, but because it reminded me that there are still other ways to create.

One photograph that held my attention was Musicians, Philippines, 1959. What fascinated me about that photograph was that every person seemed to have their own story. Not just the main subjects, but the children in the background as well. The image felt layered. It rewarded attention.

The exhibition also included a picture novel: a fictional story built from real people. I have always been drawn to stories that are partly real and partly imagined because they are still rooted in life. Reality provides the foundation, while imagination provides the structure. Perhaps that is why I became so interested in the mockups Van der Elsken created while planning his books. I even bought a postcard showing one of them.

What fascinated me was not the photographs themselves, but the sequencing, the editing, and the way he arranged images into narratives. As photographers, we often focus on making photographs. Van der Elsken reminded me that storytelling continues long after the shutter is pressed. Photographs can become chapters, and their sequence can become a story. And that led me to the question I carried home from the exhibition.

What if a photo session wasn't the final product? What if the final product was a story?

A narrative about a couple discovering Amsterdam together. A family exploring a new city. Two people building memories that are revealed not through a single photograph, but through a sequence of moments.

For years, I have focused on creating strong individual images. The exhibition reminded me that there is another layer to photography. Not only making photographs, but arranging them, giving them rhythm, and allowing one image to speak to the next.

As I left the exhibition, I wasn't thinking about a particular camera, lens, or technique. I was thinking about books, stories, and the possibility of creating work that goes beyond documenting a moment.

I don't have a clear answer yet. I don't know exactly what form that will take or how it will fit into the work I already do. What I do know is that I left the Rijksmuseum with the feeling that there is still another path to explore as a photographer, closer to the stories that exist beneath the photographs. And perhaps that is the greatest gift an exhibition can offer: not answers, but a new question that stays with you long after you leave.

About the exhibition

Ed van der Elsken. Up Close is on view at the Rijksmuseum from 19 June to 13 September 2026. The exhibition offers a new perspective on one of the Netherlands' most influential photographers, bringing together well-known photographs alongside contact sheets, handwritten notes, darkroom experiments, film fragments, and newly discovered book dummies from his archive. Drawing on years of research into Van der Elsken's personal archive, the exhibition reveals not only the final images but also the decisions, revisions, and creative process behind them.

For photographers, the exhibition is particularly valuable because it goes beyond showing finished work. It offers a rare opportunity to see how ideas evolved, how stories were constructed, and how photographs eventually found their place within books and larger narratives.

Until next time in Amsterdam,

Joanna

Capturing your Amsterdam story, one walk at a time

Vacation Photographer in Amsterdam