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)
