The necklace, 1999 © Alessandra Sanguinetti/Magnum Photos
Shutter Hub Founder Karen Harvey MBE met with Dutch museum and gallery representatives at Atelier Neerlandais in Paris to discover the best photography exhibitions taking place in the Netherlands, here’s her pick of what to see in 2025.
Before Freedom, 2022 © Adam Rouhana
21 December 2024 – 23 March 2025
The exhibition presents photographs by the Palestinian-American photographer Adam Rouhana (b.1991). Rouhana grew up in the United States, returning annually to Palestine to visit his family. His experience of everyday life there did not align with the incomplete image he encountered in the Western media. This dissonance drove Rouhana to develop an alternative to the one-sided representations within the media. With his camera, Rouhana explores life beyond the news cycle, daily joys and communal love. His raw yet dreamlike images not only highlight the beauty and complexity of Palestinian life, but also raise questions about the role of photojournalism.
Kunsthal Rotterdam
Museumpark
Westzeedijk 341
3015 AA
Rotterdam
Ana, 1950s © Saul Leiter / Saul Leiter Foundation
Saul Leiter – An Unfinished World Retrospective
23 January – 23 April 2025
Foam is proud to present a major retrospective exhibition of the celebrated American artist Saul Leiter (1923-2013). Leiter is seen as one of the most important photographers of the 1950’s in the United States, and a pioneer of colour photography. This exhibition brings together over 200 works, consisting of photography, both black-and-white and colour, as well as his abstract paintings. His eclectic oeuvre reveals a practice using shadow, light, and reflections to craft layered compositions.
Arcosanti, Wandering, Not Lost, 2022 © Dineke Versluis
Dineke Versluis – Wandering, Not Lost
25 January – 15 February 2025
Ballon Rouge will exhibit the work of Dineke Versluis. Her exhibition Wandering, not lost. offers a glimpse into the road trips she took through the Southwest of America, capturing landscapes, interiors, and cityscapes. Rotterdam-based photographer Dineke Versluis is interested in the boundary between the public and the private self and turns a documentary lens on where people live, work and spend their leisure time. She uses the classic road trip to find sites and situations that are momentarily devoid of people, but not without human presence.
Ballon Rouge
Zaagmolendrift 24
3035 JA
Rotterdam
Virginia, 1965 © Irene Poon Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
07 February – 09 June 2025
The Rijksmuseum presents the first comprehensive survey of American photography in Europe. With more than 200 works spanning three centuries, American Photography will be an exploration of the rich and multifaceted history of photography in the United States, showing how the medium has permeated every aspect of our lives: in art, news, advertising and everyday life.
Rijksmuseum
Museumstraat 1
1071 XX
Amsterdam
The Jardin de Luxembourg, 1907 © Jules, Henri and Louis Seeberger / Musee Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris
Revoir Paris. Paris Through the Lens of the Séeberger Brothers (1900-1907)
15 February – 22 June 2025
This exhibition brings together images made by the three brothers, for the four amateur photography competitions organised by the city of Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. Revealing the beginnings of street photography, and showcasing classic views of the city, they’ve never been shown in such large numbers before.
Huis Marseille
Keizersgracht 401
1016 EK
Amsterdam
The necklace, 1999 © Alessandra Sanguinetti/Magnum Photos
Alessandra Sanguinetti – The Adventures of Guille and Belinda
15 February – 09 June 2025
Magnum photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti has followed the lives of the Argentinian cousins Guillermina Aranciaga and Belinda Stutz for over 20 years. The exhibition will show nearly 50 photographs from the chance-encounter turned long-term project, capturing the dreams, struggles, and harsh realities of the girls’ rural lives.
Kunsthal Rotterdam
Museumpark
Westzeedijk 341
3015 AA
Rotterdam
The hidden camera of photographer Cas Oorthuys, May 1945 © Charles Breijer / Nederlands Fotomuseum
01 May – 01 September 2025
Foam presents The Hidden Camera, an exhibition that features work from Dutch photographers who captured the consequences of the German occupation during the 1944-45 ‘famine winter’ in Amsterdam. With their photographs, The Hidden Camera group made a significant contribution to the image of the Second World War. The photographers were recruited by members of the resistance, with the aim of informing the Dutch government in London. They worked independently and under the dangerous conditions of an occupied city, with hard-to-obtain, often poor-quality equipment. The exhibition provides an impressive picture of the consequences of hunger and cold in the dismantled Amsterdam at the end of the war. The group of photographers included Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, Charles Breijer, Kryn Taconis, and Ad Windig, among others.
FOAM
Keizersgracht 609
1017 DS
Amsterdam
‘April Fool, 11.05 am’, 2020 © Erwin Olaf
11 October 2025 – November 2026
The Stedelijk is organizing an exhibition of the work of Erwin Olaf, which opens in autumn 2025. The museum’s announcement coincides with the release of the publication Erwin Olaf Springveld. Hard werken, hard feesten, which will be presented at the Stedelijk on 11 October. Organized in collaboration with Studio Erwin Olaf, it will be the first exhibition in the Netherlands of Erwin Olaf’s work since his sudden death last year.
Stedelijk
Museumplein 10
1071 DJ
Amsterdam
Santos Building, Nederlands Fotomuseum
National Museum of Photography, Rotterdam
Opening in the second half of 2025 the Santos building, a historic landmark eight-storey warehouse in the heart of Rotterdam’s dock area, will become the state-of-the-art home for the Dutch national collection of over 6.5 million photographic images. The collection presents an ever-growing record of Dutch photographic history, from the earliest daguerreotype dated 1842 to prints by some of the most exciting contemporary photographers.
National Museum of Photography
Wilhelminakade 332
Wilhelminapier
Rotterdam
Fenix, Artist Impression, MAD Architects
Opening in May 2025, the first museum to explore migration. The inaugural collection exhibition, All Directions: Art That Moves You, will showcase 150 artworks and objects ranging from the historical to the contemporary, drawn from the museums and acquired over the past five years. Fenix will also present The Family of Migrants, an exhibition inspired by Edward Steichen’s Family of Man, one of the most famous photographic exhibitions of all time, which was presented at MoMA in 1955. Fenix’s extensive exhibition will feature 194 photographs from 55 countries taken by 136 photographers. Photographers featured include Dorothea Lange, Chien-Chi Chang, Fouad Elkoury and Sergey Ponomarev.
FENIX
Veerlaan 21
3072 AN
Rotterdam
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