City

HELMUTH TJEMMES, has been taking photographs in the city in all its forms and situations for over sixty years. It is difficult to catch him without a camera, as he is always looking for interesting and unusual situations, images and places in Rotterdam. Helmuth has created a collection over 50.000 photographs. Tjemmes bought his first simple Kodak camera in 1957, found printing too expensive, started to develop and printing himself and switched to digital photography in 2005. 

The exhibition ‘City’ not only showed the city through the lens of Tjemmes, also through the people of Rotterdam during the past decades. Especially, concentrating on the images of the fifties and sixties, which often provide moments of recognition and memories. 

The exhibition of ‘City’ showed 50 years of Rotterdam city, but also the people of Rotterdam or Rotterdammers as they were called. Curator and documentary maker Joop de Jong compiled the exhibition in 2017.