Starring Chas Gerretsen
Currently the Nederlands Fotomuseum presents Starring Chas Gerretsen, the first retrospective exhibition of the work of Dutch photographer Chas Gerretsen. Since the early ‘90s the Gerretsen’s archive is stored at the Nederlands Fotomuseum’s facilities. In addition to his famous photographs, the exhibition features an extensive selection of previously unseen work alongside archival objects that give insight in Chas’s photographic practice and his adventurous life.
Archival research and exhibition
When the Nederlands Fotomuseum invited me to curate this exhibition and edit the accompanying book, I began by delving into Chas Gerretsen’s extensive photo archive, carefully stored in the museum. I opened dozens of cardboard boxes and took out vintage prints, press passes, e-mail correspondence, typewritten letters, letters on flimsy airmail paper, unpublished manuscripts, receipts, contact prints, newspaper cuttings and the occasional object, like a belt buckle. It was like rifling through the cupboards and drawers in someone’s home: photographer Chas Gerretsen came to life before my very eyes.
The name ´Chas´ proved to be an American abbreviation of ´Charles Arthur´, the names bestowed on him when he was born in Groningen in 1943. In his teens, he was thrilled by the colourful American adventure films he saw at the local cinema. As a young adult, he left the Netherlands but, wherever he was living (Sydney, Singapore, Santiago de Chile, or Phnom Penh), he always kept in close touch with home. His letters to his mother invariably begin ‘Dear mum’ and read like an adventure story.
Those letters, the unpublished autobiography that he allowed me to read, and his social media posts of recent years all seemed to me like parts of a self-written script. It led from scenes of war in late-sixties Vietnam and Cambodia to the military coup in Chile in the early seventies and ended back where his journey began: inside the Hollywood dream factory. Because, tucked away in a corner of the Collections Department, I’d spotted house removal boxes prominently labelled ‘Apocalypse Now’. And inside them I discovered photos Chas took of Dennis Hopper on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s famous 1976 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now.
The Nederlands Fotomuseum has safeguarded, catalogued, cleaned and digitized the photographic treasures in Chas’s archive. Exploring them for this retrospective has given us an intimate knowledge of his complex oeuvre. We have gained insight into the various roles he assumed: as war photographer, photojournalist, set photographer and studio portraitist. That diversity was prompted both by his desire to live life to the full and, no doubt, by the need to earn a living.
The experience has also underlined the importance of preserving such material. It enables us to look back and reflect on events of the past. To appreciate the value of being on the spot and capturing history as it is made. The surprising and unexpected episodes that I came across in the course of my journey in Chas’s footsteps seem to me precisely the strength and beauty of his life and his photography.
For Chas, photography was a means of looking into situations from the outside. It allowed him to enter, observe and participate in a variety of worlds, then move on again. His episodic career is perhaps best summed up as a life lived as a series of separate scenes. The link between them is Chas himself, which is why I have given him the starring role in the exhibition and the associated book. Not to place him on a pedestal, but to give him the recognition that his photography so richly deserves.
This exhibition and publication will take the audiences and readers to the battlefields of Vietnam, the streets of Santiago de Chile, the set of Apocalypse Now, and the stages of Hollywood film stars. These four separate chapters in Chas’s work and life seem at first sight to have little connection with each other. But together they constitute the extraordinary foundations of Chas’s photographic oeuvre and life.
This is the first time that the Nederlands Fotomuseum organises an exhibition, and publishes a catalogue, of a living photographer whose collection they hold. His extraordinary archive was acquired in 1995. Chas and his partner Monika Pfandzelter have worked tirelessly on organising and describing the archive in the past decades. Working with them over the past year was an amazing experience for me and I highly value the contributions they’ve made to the whole curatorial process by sharing all their stories.
Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam till 22 April 2022
Press reviews
Click here for a selection of press reviews (in Dutch)
Radio interview with Iris Sikking
TV item with Chas Gerretsen (see below)
Photographer Chas Gerretsen: "Mijn leven is een serie" | Khalid en Sophie, BNNVARA, October 2021
Exhibition catalogue
In de hoofdrol Chas Gerretsen (Dutch)
Starring Chas Gerretsen (English)
Edited by Iris Sikking
Authors: Preface Birgit Donker |Essay Iris Sikking|Text contributions Hedy van Erp, Markha Valenta, Wilco Versteeg and the curatorial team of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago de Chile.
Design: Kummer & Herrman |Pages: 256 |Dimensions: 233 x 296 mm |Paperback with four different types of paper |About 200 images and a selection of archival objects |Published by Lecturis
Two other books of Chas Gerretsen were released in October 2021, his autobiography: Het wonderbaarlijke en vreemde leven van Chas Gerretsen, Boom Uitgevers, ISBN 9789024434473 and Apocalypse Now, The Lost Photo Archive, Prestel Publishing, ISBN 978-3791388083
