Het L.P. Polhuis Archief / The L.P. Polhuis Archive: Een Gewoon Familie-Album / An Ordinary Family Album

Even by snapshot standards, the images in this charming book are exceptional. Leo Polhuis started photographing his first baby in 1959 and only stopped photographing his family in 1981, when he became ill. Polhuis photographed, almost like an anthropologist, all family activities with the enthusiasm typical of a Dutch amateur. Many of these images overlap with current documentary practice and, in this sense, his work seems ahead of its time. Most archives or albums are haphazard, but presented here is a body of work that clearly demonstrates the meticulous devotion of a family man who, over the course of two decades, became a photographer.