Born in 1959 in Hilversum, the Netherdands. Lives and works in Amsterdam. Erwin Olaf started as a photojournalist documenting the nightlife of the 1990’s. He emerged onto the international art scene with his series Chessmen, which won the Young European Photographer of the Year award in 1988.
In recent years he has developed his themes through the form of monumental tableaux, for which he adopts the role of director as well as a photographer. Erwin Olaf’s bold approach to his work has earned several commissions from institutions, including Louis Vuitton, Vogue, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
In 2018, the Rijksmuseum acquired five hundred key artworks from Olaf’s forty-year œuvre for their collection. This followed official portraits he made for the Dutch royal family in 2017–18 and his designing the new euro coin for King Willem-Alexander in 2013.
He has been awarded Photographer of the Year in the International Color Awards (2006), received the Silver Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival (2008), a Lucie Award for achievement in advertising (2008), the Netherlands’ prestigious Johannes Vermeer Award (2011) and has been awarded Kunstbeeld magazine’s Dutch Artist of the Year (2014).His work was exhibited all around the world, including the Museum Ludwig in Cologne; the Málaga Centre for Contemporary Art; the São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound; the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin; the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem; the Santiago Museum of Contempory Art; and recently the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
