Photo of the Week - Charles Breijer
Breijer captures the methods of a resistance group documenting occupied WW2 Amsterdam.
Each week I take a close look at one photo to explore how visual culture shapes our understanding of the world.
The Underground Camera was an underground resistance group of Dutch photographers who illegally captured the inhumane conditions Amsterdammers faced during German occupation in the 1944-45 ‘famine winter’. In this image Andrea Domburg and Margreet Meijboom-van Konijnenburg demonstrate their working methods after the liberation, at the end of May 1945. Upon closer inspection we see a camera lens peeking out between the intricate layers of the woven bag. Andrea, who had been a nurse for some time, often accompanied the photographers to distract attention and keep an eye on the surroundings.
The images that were captured this way show devastating scenes, like undernourished children, large groups of people jostling for food supplies, bagged-up corpses along the streets and intimidation maneuvers of the occupying forces. Painfully reminded of the images coming from Gaza today, I left the Foam exhibition feeling distraught by the fact that history is repeating itself in front of the world’s eyes - and that all that mainstream media seems to have learned is to look away. With the advancement of the internet and social media, citizen journalists are becoming a more solid part of the media landscape - fulfilling the important task of exposing crimes that are intentionally kept from public eye.
Charles Breijer was one of the most productive photographers of The Underground Cameara. In 1937 he started to work for the publisher De Arbeiderspers, where he photographed for the weekli Wij (Dutch for ‘We’) and the daily Het Volk (Dutch for ‘The People’). During the occupation, when De Arbeiderspers was under German authority, Breijer used his work as a cover for his illegal photography and resistance activities.
Thanks for reading dear midnight, my newsletter with reflections on all things photography, publishing and the artistic process. In these mailings you will read about the material that comes across my path while working on my personal projects and Foam Magazine.