Everyone a Photographer

de Mattie Boom

By the end of the nineteenth century, people began to record their daily lives using small, handheld cameras. This made photography more direct, faster, and dynamic. The similarity with our time, in which more and more people are taking photographs, is striking. In this publication, Mattie Boom describes the rise of amateur photography in the Netherlands: the photographers, the photographs, the albums, the key figures, and the backgrounds. At the time, amateur photography was mainly a pastime for the wealthy: upper-class gentlemen, gentlewomen and even the young Queen Wilhelmina. Especially young entrepreneurs, however, set out to bring photography to the general public. Exhibition: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (15.02.-10.06.2019).