FORUM Groningen presents: “Starring Chas Gerretsen” till March 17, 2024.
His name may not immediately ring a bell, but his photographs of the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia, the 1973 coup in Chile and Hollywood celebrities like Dennis Hopper, Marlon Brando and John Travolta are world-famous. Being in the right place at the right time typifies this photographer.
In 2020, the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam had invited curator Iris Sikking to introduce Chas Gerretsen and his work in an exhibition which was shown for eight months in the Fotomuseum. This comprehensive compilation with over 300 images and exhibits of Gerretsen’s impressive oeuvre can now be seen in Groningen.
Iris Sikking explains, “This exhibition takes the audience back to 1968-1972, to the battlefields of South-East Asia, Vietnam and Cambodia, the streets of Santiago de Chile (1973/74,) the set of ‘Apocalypse Now’ and onto film-sets and homes of Hollywood stars in the seventies and eighties. These four separate chapters in Chas’s work and life seem at first sight to have little connection with each other. But together they constitute the extraordinary foundations of Chas’s photographic oeuvre and life.”
Visitors have the chance to get to know the entire scope of Gerretsen’s photography and the man himself, who had left Groningen in the sixties. The retrospective and its accompanying publication reflect on an amazing and unpredictable life and photographic career: from photojournalism and receiving the ‘Robert Capa Gold Medal’ to Hollywood glamor; from freelance photographer with the French agency Gamma, Paris, till Gerretsen created his own photo-agency in 1978; a life from backpacker to a successful photographer and filmmaker.
Chas Gerretsen will be in Groningen from the fifth till 11th March. Guided tours are arranged by the FORUM: https://forum.nl/en/whats-on/chas-gerretsen-foto-exhibition
Starring Chas Gerretsen
till March 17, 2024.
FORUM Groningen
Nieuwe Markt 1
9712 KN Groningen, Netherlands
https://forum.nl/en
Exhibition catalogue:
“Starring Chas Gerretsen” 2021 by Lecturis; ISBN: 9789462264069
Latest publications:
Chile book(s):
“CHILE- EL ARCHIVO FOTOGRÁFICO 1973-1974” (Spanish) August 2023, Editorial RM; ISBN: 978-84-19233-62-2
CHILE – THE PHOTO ARCHIVE 1973 – 1974 – (English) November 2023, Lecturis. ISBN: 978-94-62264-84-7
“Apocalypse Now, The Lost Photo Archive, by Chas Gerretsen” 2021 by Prestel Verlag / Random House; ISBN: 978-3-7913-8808-3
