Before my father, Foppe [William in US], died he gave me several small boxes inc. a cigar box containing sparse & smudged-difficult-to-read diaries & tiny agendas covering the period when he was plucked from Amsterdam’s streets & transported by train to Berlin where he worked as a dwangarbeider [forced laborer] in armaments factories [1943-45]. When my father died in 2002, my mom purged the house of most everything to do with him, inc. all of our super-8 home movies & videos. So, luckily I already had these 3 boxes. This small, random selection when, laid out, may form an alternative star chart of a life …
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Sheet of leftover Nazi food stamps
Negatives of an art photo session [nude woman]
6×9 cm secret/hidden camera street shots in Berlin, 3 children standing on st. in a daze, 2 Amsterdam girls walking their dogs
Tourist postcards of Berlin: BxW Brandenberg Gate, 6 more in color
Sixon photoelectric lightmeter operating manual
Naked photo of mom sitting under 17th-c. Dutch Master reprint
Many 6x9cm negatives: a woman on a sailboat, another woman cavorting in North Sea surf, photos of random women posed in public spaces
Diary 1 ex: 30.03.43 To buy: transformer, star chart at Mercurius, 16.06.43 Take ID card with me to R.V.B., 23.06.43 One two buckle you shoe / sing a song of sunbeams
BxW postcard of Luzern Chapel Bridge, 2 of Essen’s sites
Diary 2 exc: 03.06.44 daytime bombardment / total of 260 bombardments of Berlin west / Books read inc. Oliver Twist & War of the Worlds
BxW postcard from Rio de Janeiro, friend Pinhas, 1957
8x11cm BxW photo of a smiling young female friend flanked by 2 male co-workers in a pharmacy
BxW artsy photo of alluring bikini-clad gal, address on back
Pentacon PRAKTICA superTL camera instructions for use
Neg of father lifting me up over his head
Many negs of mother lying alluringly on a blanket in dunes
Neg of mother hovering in close to a Telefunken radio
Neg of father standing in North Sea surf
Neg of mother feeding me in a high chair
Photo of father’s girlfriend[?] posed in front of Berlin
ruins
Neg of a goal score in unknown soccer match
Neg of mother in bathing suit sitting in a wooden barrow
43 negs of me as baby & toddler
Neg of mother with cig in her mouth [she didn’t smoke] posed like a tough gangster’s dame
1944 Transport pass Hartung-Jachmann armaments factory
1950s spiral notepad for Quality Control Dept. of Hoogovens steel foundry
Yellowed 1953 3-pg paper: Simple Tests for Identifying Some Alloys
Many more negatives of studio “art” photo nudes
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bart plantenga
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