Archivo explores remarkable archives.

The first seven issues of the quirky photo magazine Archivo are now bundled into one solid folder. Each issue consists of two folio paper quires devoted to the personal archive of a photographer.

The originators of this project, photographer Paul Kooiker and publisher Willem van Zoetendaal who both live and work in Amsterdam, selected intriguing images made or collected by young photographers. Their list includes Harold Strak, Eva-fiore Kovacovsky, Johannes Schwartz, Daya Cahen, Paul Kooiker, Qui Yang, Kyungwoo Chun, Erik van der Weijde, Sara Blokland and the duo Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm. Four further issues are devoted to a series of obscure television images photographed by Miroslav Tichy, an overview of the distinctive photography books designed and published by Van Zoetendaal, multi-cultural baby pictures by Lee To Sang and some rare and superb propaganda books from the collection of Martin Parr.



Lee To Sang is the odd one out here, as a retired portrait photographer he could neither be categorized as a promising emerging or as an autonomous working photographer. Still the beautiful baby portraits Kooiker and Van Zoetendaal selected from his immense archive are both revealing and hilarious. To Sang Photo Studio was located in the middle of a 19th-century working class area in Amsterdam with immigrants from Suriname, Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan, China and Kurdistan, to name a few. Everyone from the neighborhood, including the native Dutch, sooner or later had his or her picture taken at To Sang’s.




The other excerpts from the photographer’s archives can be personal, conceptual or documentary and sometimes all at the same time. Daya Cohen shows her reportage on the growing Russian youth movement inspired by the ideals of Valdimir Putin. Blommers and Schumm recorded a comical costume party with and by designers Victor & Rolf. The contributions of Blokland, Chun, Kooiker, Schwartz and Strak are quite conceptual, but there’s always room for a personal touch and/or a special sense of humor.

All together Archivo represents the adventure, the sheer infinity of possibilities of the medium as a vehicle of creativity, of ways to look at our world. This project is made with knowledge of and passion for photography -- and it shows. —Han Schoonhoven