In 1980, Marc Miller and Bettie Ringma, a Dutch-American couple, spent the year making Polaroids of Amsterdam nightlife that have been collected in a beautifully-designed new book. Mainly concentrating around an area locally known as ‘De Wallen’—the most extensive and best known red-light district in town—they portrayed prostitutes, natives of the area and passers-by, bar staff and pub tigers. The images were all taken in an informal manner, though each subject was a customer of the photographers’ little business on the side. Within that square mile and a half—a biotope where a wide variety of exotic creatures of the night crawl around together—one could have an instant photo taken on request for the price of two beers.
In the visual arts, there is a longstanding tradition of what in Dutch art history is known as the ‘tronie’: typological portraits depicting the anonymous faces of figures considered outsiders. The odd man out, the eccentric drifter, the prostitute and the parvenu. Paintings of this kind became very popular in the 17th century—Adriaen Brouwer and Jan Steen, for example, were known to observe and draw people in taverns and cafes. From more recent times, we know that such a fascination for debauched nightlife continued in the dive bar portraits of Brassaï and later also in Anders Petersen’s Cafe Lehmitz (1978). These were close-ups of individuals in a state of intoxication, nevertheless vibrating with genuine empathy and respect for the people encountered by the artist—an approach which the early 80s Amsterdam Polaroids also reflect.
The collaborative work of Miller and Ringma from 40 years ago has enjoyed renewed attention in recent years. Internationally, the artist duo is probably best known for the series of proto-selfies that they created as conceptual art. From 1976 to 1979, the couple were regulars at the CBGB club at the Bowery, a bar in a notoriously grungy area of New York City at the time. Yet, it had a certain attraction to local creatives who felt a need for the more ramshackle side of life—including Miller, who made a wide range of polaroids of his Dutch partner Bettie at the CBGB, their “second home,” posing in an unbound manner with all sorts of rock stars, who are now considered celebrities, and other punks that made up the Bowery music scene of the late 1970s.
The couple then moved to Amsterdam, temporarily exchanging their loft in the Lower East Side for a houseboat. Finding themselves short on cash, they needed to find a solution for their challenging financial situation. And so, as they’d already witnessed, and partaken in, the habit of impulsively snapping Polaroids when they went out in New York—where the art scene was almost like an alternative existence that lived in parallel to the mainstream in the small hours—it was an intuitive decision to carry on doing it in the nightlife arena of Amsterdam. Considering their attraction to the Bowery in New York City, it was to be expected that the Dutch red-light district was going to be the hangout zone of choice for Miller and Ringma.
Making a tour of the pubs around Rembrandtplein, Leidseplein and Zeedijk—the busiest nightlife areas in Amsterdam—they took countless instant photos that were distributed among the clientele hanging around in the many brown pubs, Turkish cafés, transvestite bars and queer clubs that the city contained in those days. Along the way, besides selling their pictures on demand, Miller and Ringma were sponsored by the Polaroid company allowing them to build their own shadow archive of more than 350 portraits of the wide range of remarkable individuals they met during their “photography excursions.” The outcome is a keen preservation of the specific social mores that could be witnessed in the local pub culture around that time—that have now almost vanished.
What started as a simple business model (camera + alcohol = money) eventually resulted in a remarkable record of a juncture in culture as Amsterdam transitioned from the late 70s to the early 80s. Over four decades later, these pictures—produced with a SX 70 Sonar Autofocus which is now considered iconic—have become part of the collection of the City Archives, which means they are now part of Amsterdam’s collective memory. But the particular fashion and style of the sitters’ outfits and makeup—colors well preserved in the idiosyncratic medium of the polaroid—also make these images a valuable addition to the history of art.
In could even be said that, while tracing a clear lineage to Dutch and Flemish painting traditions of three centuries earlier, the pair’s project is an early adaptation of a contemporary fascination with the selfie and the contemporary artistic appropriations that follow from a booming interest in all sort of vernacular genres of the 20th century. Most significantly, the Miller/Ringma archives function as a time capsule, containing a spontaneity—an ease and exuberance—which can only be looked back at with nostalgia.
In our age of hyper self-awareness, the archive triggers a valuable reminder that there was once a time in which we could still be portrayed without thinking that anyone else would ever get to see, and judge, the often unflattering poses and uncontrolled manners we make in a state of euphoria and abandon.
Selling Polaroids in the Bars of Amsterdam, 1980
by Bettie Ringma & Marc H Miller
Publisher: Lecturis
ISBN: 9789462264724