Erwin Olaf is a Dutch photographer. He was born in 1959. He does both commercial and fine art photography. His commerical work included Levi's, Microsoft, and Nokia.
He studied journalism at the School of Journalism in Utrecht. He currently lives in Amsterdam. He got his start after winning the first prize for the Young European Photographer competition, which was followed by an exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Cologn, Germany. He is also a videographer
His Fine art work includes a series of photographs titled "Grief", it depicts ordinary looking people in their homes showing subtle signs of grief. Sometimes it looks like simple grief, and sometimes it looks like deep deep grief.
Olaf plays with both high-key and low-key in his photography, occasionally meeting in the middle.
His series titled "Royal Blood" depicts famous royal people and how they were killed. Most of the royalty I cannot recognize (as he is using models), but Princess Diana is the most obvious, I think, especially with the Mercedes logo slicing her arm. 
Olaf's high key work is intriguing in a non- threatening way. Its funny to think that his low key work seems to be more humorous than the others.
ReplyDeleteOlaf isnt only a professional photographer but i would call him more of a professional lighter. Especially in the royal blood image, wow, that is the perfect combo of good light and imagination.
ReplyDeleteI find the high key versus low key interesting. Im curious if he shows the pieces together ever or if they are all seperate series. They seem to work with each other in a juxtaposed way. Even if he doesnt use them all together I wonder if the image series ever inspire another... "Oh Im bored of everything being white, lets do black."
ReplyDeleteI also really like the image from the Royal Blood series. I wonder how he casts his models to achieve a look alike.
I really like the tonality in the 3rd picture. It's monochromatic, elegant, neat and dramatic. For this picture, I feel like it combines photography and graphic design in it
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