Erwin Olaf’s DUSK & DAWN

Hermitage Amsterdam exhibits a photo series by Erwin Olaf entitled DUSK & DAWN. The exhibition comprises 12 works and can be viewed on the first floor of the Keizersvleugel (the wing on Nieuwe Keizersgracht). Olaf’s inspiration for this series was the work of photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. From 1899 to 1900, she photographed African-American pupils of the Hampton Institute in Virginia. Their life story at that time was still overshadowed by their lot as freed slaves. Through her sophisticated aesthetic style, Johnston shows the world that, despite their dark past, a bright future is within these pupils’ reach.

DUSK is set at the beginning of the twentieth century and portrays an upper middle class, dark skinned family. The series gives the impression that the enlightened end of a long road to a liberated world has been found: a social paradise.

In DAWN, Olaf shows the same scenes, only this time the setting is Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century and, moreover, the palette is entirely pale. The inspiration for this work came to Olaf one morning in Moscow where he was staying in a five star hotel. A white woman and her son entered the opulent breakfast room. Both of them were blond and dressed in white clothes. Seated on white chairs, at a table covered with a white cloth, and surrounded by high, blank white walls, Olaf saw the counterpart of DUSK take shape before his eyes. And so DAWN became the aesthetic mirror to DUSK.