All works by Erwin Olaf: Courtesy Flatland Gallery.

The text below is cited from the catalogue "Erwin Olaf", produced for the 24th International Knokke-Heist Photography Festival in Belgium, 2002. Original texts by Peter Weiermair, Jonathan Turner, Theo van Gogh, Wim Beeren, Dirk van der Spek.

Erwin Olaf (born Hilversum, 1959) lives and works in Amsterdam and is one of the most innovative and controversial artists active in the field of photography. In 1988, he received the "Young European Photographer Prize" in Germany. In 1998, one of his Diesel Jeans photographs was awarded the "Silver Lion" at the Commercial Festival in Cannes.

Olaf´s works are characterized by the humour of their images and their constant allusions to images from art and subculture. He also makes references to picture structures from pornography, and practice in advertising and fashion photography, to which he frequently provides a sharp counterbalance.

In his latest collections Olaf digs deep into the heart and soul of beauty, mocks the contemporary view of eroticism, and dissects various uncomfortable concepts such as pornography as folklore, acrobatic sex as a comic release and rape as a malicious pleasure.

The models Olaf photographed in this series don´t make you long to know more about the person in the picture. But the Feeling, with a capital F, that comes from these tableaux orchestrated to the last millimetre, is of an unbelievable chill, as though the world has become a deserted ice-sheet. The nice thing about "Blacks" is that the people have been struck blind. The photographer has become God and His wrath comes toward us like a sourge which steals away the light from his defenceless creatures. Why they´re all blacked up? "Because they are my slaves, my black sheep…" Olaf concludes.

The combination of Borek Sípek-Erwin Olaf is not in the first instance surprising. The work of both of them is charactarized by a tendency towards extravagance, by an often humorous love of the fantastic and absurd. Like his staged studio photographs, the pictures taken by Olaf in Slovakia are sober, almost classic in construction. Sípek´s objects are attentively carried and shown, or are simply part of the environment. To put it more strongly: at times they seem completely at home; this apparently is the result of both Sípek´s design and Olaf´s stage management. Olaf´s photographs derive their credibility from the combination of distance and theatricality, from a sometimes almost sociological outlook and a love of effect, from strict image construction, and from the registration of seemingly casual but significant details. A fascinating balance between staging and reality.

Olaf´s Royal Blood series presents history as pulp fact. In his search through history, he has selected eight stars of violent melodrama. They are gloomy subjects whose intriguing deaths are almost as important to us as their life-stories. Setting historical accuracy aside, he depicts each character as a blonde actor, a strong comment on society´s perception of the potency of pale hair. In Olaf´s photographs, these figures with their red-rimmed eyes, stare back at the viewer in damning expressions of accusation and condemnation. "They´re really angry at what destiny had in store for them", says Olaf. "So that´s why they´ve now all become avenging angels".

Erwin Olaf delves into the heart and soul of beauty. He satirizes contemporary attitudes towards eroticism. In his Mature series, he betrays the imperfect beauty of sexy pensioners. "I´ve always tried to make jokes about beautiful people to try to put the whole stupid, over-valued fashion model industry in a new perspective", says Olaf. "With the help of make-up, wigs and revealing clothing, plus a bit of computer manipulation, I changed these elderly women into actresses".

Fashion Victims is an unconventional synthesis of eroticism and beauty. The models are basic sex objects. Olaf has classified Fashion Victims as "a reaction against the lust of consumerism" and "anonymous pornography as a fashion statement". The photographs feature male and female nudes in the same forceful poses that haute couture nowadays dictates. Their faces are hidden by designer label shopping bags pulled down over their heads, symbolising the blind passion for cut-throat fashion. The decor in these shameless photos is brown leather and raw timber panelling, creating an atmosphere as hot as a Swedish sauna. However, there are no extra props to hide the raunchiness.

At the end of the eighties, several children in the village of Oude Pekela in the north of The Netherlands claimed that they had been forced into sexual games with a clown. The police intervened; hundreds of people were interviewed but nothing was really confirmed.

"To me, clowns represent anonymity and anger", says Olaf. "Although they are meant to entertain children, they are frightening. If the children are then also confronted with nudity, you really have a problem".

In Olaf´s Paradise series, the demonic clowns are emotionally disjointed performers. They are also sexually uninhibited. Olaf shows us older clowns in more than close-ups, smudged make-up, partially brushed away. This creates a sensation of perverted, melting lunacy. They are accompanied by a motley crowd of figures dressed as Pierrot, Pinocchio, the strong man, the tattoo man, the woman with a beard and other circus freaks. In every photograph a clown is in eye contact with the spectator. Sometimes his look is very vindictive, as if he wants to make us jointly responsible for the brutal rape that takes place in every photo.

The Paradise series has two clearly delineated conceptual starting points for Olaf. Firstly, it was inspired by Rubens´painting "Hippodamia´s violation", which belongs to the Prado collection in Madrid. A second souce of inspiration was the "horror and decadence of nightlife", his vision of a "nightmare party circuit" in the Paradiso pop temple in Amsterdam, which is where he organised a big event with the circus as its theme. This inspired him to create the new series, with the referring name "Paradise 2001".

Olaf summarizes his Paradise series as "An underworld nightmare where the clowns are the villains. Everyone, whether they are passive, violent or laughing, is guilty and every figure is a caricature". He agrees that these photographs are not about stimulation and excitement. "Rape is the use of someone´s sexual drive against someone else´s will. Physically and mentally it is the most despicable thing there is. It is the highest form of horrifying abuse of male power and it proves that everything is also extremely fragile".