- 01 AMSTERDAM | Bicycles, boats, water and domestic architecture on Prinsengracht
This gallery is the first of four showing photographs of Amsterdam made on a three day family meeting in 2018. Eclectic imagery includes buildings, architectural details, canals, boats, barges, paintings, sculpture, reflections, bicycles and shop window displays. They were made on walks through the unfamiliar, mostly with companions but with a couple of brief solo explorations. There was little time for calm consideration and no chance of revisiting an image in more appropriate light.
- 02 AMSTERDAM | University building on the Spui with scaffolding, blue tarpaulin, sunlight and shadows
I’ve been interested in books for ever so shops devoted to them are a great attraction. Although passing severaI I only managed to enter one of them. No chance to dive into an architectural bookshop, too late to beat the shutter descending at the English Bookstore but a brief time by the art, photography, design and architecture shelves at the American Book Center a few yards from this scaffolded University building. In this image I removed the colours in the street below to emphasise the tree-shadowed blue tarpaulin against blacks and greys.
- 03 AMSTERDAM | Motor bike chrome reflecting blue sky light
A solo walk took me across a bridge at the NEMO Science Museum on a circuit of Oosterdokseiland past the glazed box of the Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ concert hall and back to my starting point near the Het Scheepvaartmuseum. This bike was parked there under trees with its chromed sculptural engine forms reflecting blues from clear skies beyond.
- 04 AMSTERDAM | Construction detail by the A’dam ferry landing 1
One of our family outings was by ferry from the Central Station to the A’dam Lookout perched high above the dockside and the surrounding landscapes. I wished then that I’d had a longer lens to explore both near and far. I’d have liked to have seen more of the Eye Film Museum other than the roof and the entry steps in the third AMSTERDAM gallery but perhaps next time. This is a detail from a structure near the Lookout. I was drawn to its stacked containers with strong colours and graphics in this and the next photograph.
- 05 AMSTERDAM | Construction detail by the A’dam ferry landing 2
Both were taken very hurriedly as we walked back to the ferry. I concentrated on image framing rather more than what I was actually looking at: memory suggests it was an environmental display.
- 06 AMSTERDAM | Detail from waterfront flags by the Nemo Science Museum
Escorted by a young grandson I spent several energetic hours in the NEMO Science Museum. Its striking verdigris wedge form uses its roof as the route from quayside to entrance doors as well as a seating, activity and viewing area. The interior includes large spaces devoted to all manner of hands-on activities to challenge mental and physical skills and enthuse young and some not so young visitors.
- 07 AMSTERDAM | Figurative stone sculpture at a corner of Berenstraat and Keizersgracht
I noticed this and the two following carvings on the façade of a vintage clothing store on a corner of Berenstraat and Keizersgracht. A rather austere three-storey plus attics building in thin red brick stood on a grey stone ground floor. Five of twelve windows flanking the corner were square with framing stonework including three rounded pilasters with carved capitals at little above face level.
- 08 AMSTERDAM | Same building: carved stone polar bear capital
I’ve not been able to find anything of its history but the thin profile red brick and the sculptures suggest early twentieth century and an Amsterdam School of architecture influence. Images of other buildings with similar brickwork and sculpture appear in the other Amsterdam galleries.
- 09 AMSTERDAM | Same building: stylised stone capital to a squared pilaster
The shop door on the long Berenstraat façade is flanked by squared pilasters with these capital forms and by narrow windows. The stepped gable high above has curves rather than internal right angles as levels drop. On Keizersgracht the stone entrance door case to the upper floors is carved in a sympathetic repeating design
- 10 AMSTERDAM | Clothing 1: blues, yellow and violet
This trio of photographs were cropped from the shop window displays. The combinations of fabric structures and colours appealed as collages.
- 11 AMSTERDAM | Clothing 2: blue, red and yellow
- 12 AMSTERDAM | Clothing 3: grey, green and red
- 13 AMSTERDAM | Window glass with painted hands against shop interior fragments beyond
An image collected during a rapid and time-limited walk from the Dam to the Opera House was briefly paused in Reestraat. The stylised painted hands on the glass against the colours inside the shop appealed.
- 14 AMSTERDAM | Window glass with reflections, petunias and a phrenology head
Opposite on Reestraat, this white glazed phrenology head fronted by pink petunias was part of the décor in a restaurant. The white abstraction and café table people are exterior reflections.
- 15 AMSTERDAM | Small domestic window with reflected buildings and windowsill copperware
The window framed building reflections and carefully arranged copperware attracted later on the same walk.
- 16 AMSTERDAM | The National Maritime Museum courtyard roof structure against blue sky...
The Scheepvaartmuseum building dates from 1656 as the National Naval Warehouse for the Royal Dutch Navy: it became a museum in 1973. The buildings enclose a square courtyard now covered by a glazed roof fitted during extensive renovations and alterations completed in 2011.
- 17 AMSTERDAM | ...and its shadow on the paving below
The Museum building is interesting in itself. It houses a fine collection including superb displays of ship models, figureheads, maps, photographs and other related material. An outbuilding houses an elaborately decorated and gilded Royal Barge built in 1816. Moored alongside is a replica of the ‘Amsterdam’ built by the Dutch East India Company and lost in the English Channel on its maiden voyage in 1749.
- 18 AMSTERDAM | Herringbone paving in brick
Looking down is sometimes as interesting as looking up. This is a detail from an area of old brick herringbone pattern paving in the Herengracht - Wolvenstraat area.