Tuesday 29 May 2012

Johan van der Keuken's Wij Zijn 17 - 1955




Here's one you no doubt know of already- Keuken's 'We are 17'.
But well worth a look again. Wij Zijn 17 was his first book, and comprises 30 plates of his friends, smoking, lounging around, and sort of doing what teenagers actually do alot of the time i.e. not much, rather than tearing around on motorcycles and whatnot. What's special about this book is that it captures a time just after the war when teenagers were just about to become a group of their own in society's eyes, and youth culture as the collective conciousness remembers it was about to begin. It's such a quiet book, almost as if everybody is waiting for something to happen, which in a sense, they are.