Asta “We built this City on Rock and Roll” (Gijsbert Hanekroot/Van Eesteren Museum)

Catawiki is auctioning photos from the exhibition We built this city on Rock and Roll in the Van Eesteren Museum in Amsterdam. The museum in Amsterdam Nieuw-West is devoted to the architect and urban planner Cornelis van Eesteren. We built this city tells the story of the rise of youth culture in the 50s, 60s and 70s and the central role rock music plays in it, with rock heroes and pop icons. The centrepiece is a retrospective exhibition of work by rock photographer Gijsbert Hanekroot, that shows photos he took of (inter)national pop heroes from that era. Dutch photographer Gijsbert Hanekroot (Brussels 1945) started his career as a photographer of rock musicians in the late sixties. Back then, the rock scene was not quite the well-oiled machine it is today. Things still had to be invented: light installations, sound, promotion, crowd control. This also applied to music journalism and photography. Almost every week, new groups were launched. Every single day, people were learning things and adapting them. Hanekroot’s development as a photographer essentially ran parallel to developments in the music scene. He travelled frequently and came face to face with the music icons of that period. His photos can be divided into four categories: concert photos, studio photos, portraits and photos made at press conferences. Hanekroot strove to capture images that revealed the person behind the musician. This resulted in portraits that are natural and intimate, relaxed and sincere. He stopped being a professional photographer in 1983 and became an entrepreneur. Twenty years later he began to digitize his archives. This led to several book publications and exhibitions in Amsterdam, Paris, Hong Kong, Moscow, London, Bologna and Tokyo.