Achter glas

Joan van der Keuken’s Achter glas (Behind Glass) is a 1957 Dutch photobook combining his black-and-white photographs with a literary text by Remco Campert. Leiden University records the book’s 1957 publication and Campert’s role, while De Slegte identifies linocuts by Georgette Apol; the 1957 issue is described as a clothbound hardcover with a dust jacket (Leiden University, Depth of Field; De Slegte; Josef Chladek).

It was not Van der Keuken’s first “photonovel,” as the draft title suggested. His debut Wij zijn 17 appeared in 1955; Achter glas was his second photobook and, in Parr and Badger’s formulation, his “second foray” into the emerging photonovel form (Leiden University, Depth of Field; Josef Chladek).

The photographer at nineteen

Born Joan van der Keuken in Amsterdam in 1938, the photographer began making portraits as a child and published Wij zijn 17 at seventeen. Leiden University’s biographical study records that he worked on Achter glas in 1956–57 while studying at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques in Paris. The book appeared in 1957, when he was nineteen (Leiden University, Depth of Field).

The same source describes the book as a romantic atmospheric narrative about twin sisters Georgette and Yvonne Apol. Campert, whom Van der Keuken met through Ed van der Elsken, wrote the accompanying text. Yvonne later married Van der Keuken in 1960 (Leiden University, Depth of Field). These relationships place the project close to the photographer’s own life without reducing it to private documentary.

Two sisters at a threshold

Georgette and Yvonne sit near a window, linger, and daydream. The action is minimal, but the book finds drama in suspension: the twins are no longer children, yet adult life remains on the other side of the glass. Parr and Badger’s account emphasizes their apparent aimlessness and the unsettled pause before adulthood, noting that this portrayal of youthful lassitude provoked controversy and became a model for later books about adolescence (Josef Chladek).

The window is both setting and metaphor. It admits light and permits vision, but it also separates interior from exterior and observer from world. Van der Keuken’s close portraits create intimacy while the glass, frames, and reflective surfaces preserve distance. The book’s emotional tension depends on that contradiction: the sisters are visible yet not fully accessible.

The photonovel as book form

Calling Achter glas a photonovel does not mean that it supplies a conventional plot. Its narrative arises from repetition, sequence, small changes of gesture, and the relation between photographs and Campert’s prose. The text is not merely a set of captions; it gives the book a parallel literary rhythm and leaves room for the reader to move between observation and imagined interior life.

This openness accords with Van der Keuken’s later working principles. The Nederlands Fotomuseum describes his photographs and films as precisely framed yet resistant to fixed meaning: beside every image, another image remained possible, and montage could bring them together without closing interpretation. The museum now places Achter glas among the three “much-discussed” photobooks from the 1950s and 1960s that entered the canon of Dutch photography (Nederlands Fotomuseum).

Photograph, text, and linocut

The book is a collaboration across media. Leiden University records that Campert wrote the text, and De Slegte identifies the black-and-white portraits, Georgette Apol’s linocuts, and Vada in Wageningen as printer of the photographs (Leiden University, Depth of Field; De Slegte).

The linocuts introduce a visibly handmade graphic register alongside the photographic tonal range. Text, print, and photograph do not simply illustrate one another; their alternation makes the physical book the narrative medium. Page turns repeatedly open and close visual thresholds, echoing the window within the photographs.

Edition cautions

The 1957 clothbound issue with dust jacket must be distinguished from the 1961 softcover edition: Bauman calls the latter the first softcover edition and explicitly notes that it was preceded by the 1957 edition (Bauman Rare Books). De Slegte catalogues the 1961 paperbound version as the second edition with 104 unnumbered pages (De Slegte).

For the 1957 issue, check the C. de Boer Jr. imprint, cloth binding, photographic sequence, Campert text, Apol linocuts, and original photographic jacket. The jacket is particularly vulnerable to edge tears, chips, fading, and separation at the folds. A jacketless copy may still be bibliographically complete as a book, but it is not equivalent as a collectible object.

Why it matters

The Nederlands Fotomuseum praises Van der Keuken’s early photobooks for poetic quality and striking montage and exhibits original photographs from Achter glas alongside layout proofs from his bookmaking practice (Nederlands Fotomuseum). Leiden’s biography, meanwhile, places the volume at the hinge between his precocious photographic career and the filmmaking for which he later became internationally known (Leiden University, Depth of Field).

Achter glas remains compelling because it turns almost nothing happening into a sustained visual experience. Two sisters, a room, a window, and a few gestures become a study of adolescence as waiting. Through montage, prose, and linocut, Van der Keuken and his collaborators made private stillness into one of the key image narratives of the postwar Dutch photobook.

Sources

• Johan van der Keuken, Depth of Field, Leiden University
• The Art I Love Most, Nederlands Fotomuseum
• Book-spread and bibliographic record, Josef Chladek
• 1961 edition record, De Slegte
• 1961 first-softcover record, Bauman Rare Books