Erwin Olaf – The Legacy (2019)

Directed by: Michiel van Erp | 77 minutes | documentary

‘There you have that angry man again,’ Erwin Olaf mumbles when he is confronted with the work from his early years as a photographer. Those photos – lots of nudes, stiff cocks, leather, bondage and challenging poses – radiate youthful passion, assertiveness and aggression. The renowned photographer is still passionate, especially when it comes to themes that are close to his heart: bullying and gay and women’s emancipation. Despite his physical decline – Olaf has been suffering from emphysema for about ten years and his health is deteriorating rapidly – ​​he stands at the Amsterdam gay festival Milkshake to campaign to combat bullying and tells emotionally about a recent event in which a taxi driver initially gave him right of way at a zebra crossing, but then gave him the gas and almost drove him off his socks. When Olaf asked what got into the man, he was told that “gays don’t have priority.” “I won’t let that happen to me. That in the last phase of my life I no longer have priority because I have a different sexual preference than a taxi driver with a fluffy beard and a fat belly.” Exclusion is a recurring theme in his work and he has always been a champion of the emancipation of women and the LGBT community in his own artistic way. “We think that women’s and gay rights are a gift that we should always keep, but that’s not the case. We have to protect them in order to keep them.”

In the year that Olaf turns sixty, the Dutch museums will extensively reflect on his impressive oeuvre. With almost 330,000 visitors, the double exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum and Photography Museum The Hague was the most visited photo exhibition ever in our country. The Rijksmuseum also honors Olaf, with ’12x Erwin Olaf’, in which his photos hang alongside the work of Dutch Masters such as Rembrandt and Jan Steen, artists who have always inspired him. Michiel van Erp, who followed the photographer extensively ten years ago for the documentary ‘Erwin Olaf, on Beauty and Fall’ (2009), Olaf once again allowed him to look over his shoulder. Ten years ago we saw the photographer struggling with accepting his illness and mortality, he has found resignation in ‘Erwin Olaf – The Legacy’ (2019). “I’m becoming a sentimental old guy,” he says. We see how bad his condition is when he has to climb a few stairs at the Rijksmuseum. Applying body lotion to yourself is also a tiring job. Despite the fact that it takes him so much more effort, Olaf has an undiminished zest for work. When his beloved mother is dying, Olaf flies to the US for a shoot. Duty calls. But he is not quite there with his head and will fly back to the Netherlands as soon as possible. “I look at the youth,” he says on the set in Palm Springs. “You feel you don’t matter anymore. That you are no longer hip and happening.”

Van Erp shows Olaf in his most vulnerable moments. When he looks at his frail naked body in front of the mirror, when he – with his husband Kevin by his side – has to be checked by the pulmonologist. Olaf is increasingly confronted with the transience of life. The most impressive scene is the endearing scene in which he and his ex-lover Teun want to reproduce a self-portrait from 1985. They were together for twenty-three years, and they still love each other. While in the original photo they were in their prime, thirty-four years later they are both seriously ill and staring their own mortality in the eye. In their nakedness they are extra vulnerable. Van Erp perfectly captures the emotion of this special gathering. Just as he manages to capture the hectic pace, emotions, tension, the unbridled commitment and drive of Olaf in all their facets in the run-up to his jubilee year. His legacy (‘Legacy’) is impressive, but just as impressive is the fascinating figure Erwin Olaf himself, who tries to accept his own transience with humor, self-mockery and passion. Just as he has become less in his work, he seems to be less so for himself. He reflects much more on what his talent has given him and feels a gratitude for everything he has achieved in his life. Thanks to Van Erp’s respectful and loving approach, we see who the man behind the photos really is: combative and at the same time fragile.