8 museomag   01 ‘ 2020 
FOCUS ON THE FEMALE BODY 
“BRUSHED BY LIGHT”: AN UPCOMING EXHIBITION BY CARLA VAN DE PUTTELAAR 
AT THE MNHA 
From 20 March to 30 August 2020 the Musée national 
d’histoire et d’art will show the exhibition Carla van de 
Puttelaar, Brushed by Light, an overview of the work 
of the Dutch photographer from the last twenty years. 
The name Carla van de Puttelaar is primarily asso- 
ciated with photographs of female nudes. However, 
to merely identify her with nude photographs would 
not do justice to her other work, especially since it has 
become much more diverse in recent years. In all her 
work, the interaction of light and skin occupies the cen- 
tral focus. Here, skin can be the skin of a female model 
but also the bark of a tree trunk, a flower petal or the 
fabric of a piece of clothing or drapery. 
AWARDED IN THE FRAME OF THE   
PRIX DE ROME PHOTOGRAPHY 
Carla van de Puttelaar was born in 1967 in Zaandam 
and studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amster- 
dam from 1991 to 1996. In the beginning of her studies, 
she decided to specialize in photography. Her interest 
in people was already clearly visible with her portraits 
and her focus on the female body during her Rietveld 
years. An important moment in her early career was 
her admission to the final round of the 2002 Prix de 
Rome Photography competition, being awarded a 
Basic Prize. 
The results of her efforts for the Prix de Rome and 
much of her other early work became visible in her first 
solo book, which was published in 2004 and simply 
bears the title Carla van de Puttelaar. This book was fol- 
lowed by several other solo books, that gave a survey 
of recent work. In Adornments, published in 2017, with 
photographs from the years 2011-2017, she extended 
her field of activity and concentrated on female skin, 
flowers and trees. 
Among the highlights of her work in those years are 
the photographs she made for a project of the Rem- 
brandthuis Museum in Amsterdam in connection with 
an exhibition of the drawings and prints of nude models 
© 
carla 
van 
de 
puttelaar 
Two photographs by Carla van de Puttelaar from the Rembrandt Series, 2015/2016: n°12 (above) and n°4 (opposite)