Lust for Life — Ed van der Elsken in Colour (Dewi Lewis, 2019)

Lust for Life is the first major retrospective dedicated entirely to Ed van der Elsken’s colour photography — a vibrant, defiant, and overdue celebration of one of Europe’s most idiosyncratic image-makers. While van der Elsken became known for his black-and-white portraits of bohemians, lovers, and strangers, this volume reframes him as a pioneer of colour: exuberant, raw, and always attuned to what people made of life.

Drawn from a lifetime of street encounters across Amsterdam, Tokyo, Paris, and beyond, these photographs are spontaneous and intimate, revealing a photographer more interested in energy than perfection. Whether it’s a peroxide-blonde woman walking three white poodles in 1980s Amsterdam or a spiked-haired punk under Tokyo’s night lights, van der Elsken’s gaze is always curious, never clinical — a mix of affection, theatre, and punk reportage.

Published in 2019 by Dewi Lewis on the occasion of a major exhibition at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Lust for Life repositions van der Elsken within the lineage of colour street photography — less polished than Eggleston or Meyerowitz, but more impulsive, more European in its flair. For Darwin, this book brings the heat and noise of lived experience into the archive. It’s not about formalism — it’s about being alive.

Technical Sheet

Title: Lust for Life — Ed van der Elsken in Colour
Artist / Author: Ed van der Elsken
Date: 2019
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Softcover
Dimensions (cm): approx. 24 x 30 cm
Language: English
Pages: 242
Publisher / Editor: Dewi Lewis Publishing
ISBN: 9781911306504
Condition: NEW