Kees Scherer 1920-1993

Kees Scherer was born on April 16th, 1920 at the Lijnbaansgracht in the characteristic Amsterdam quarter the ‘Jordaan´. His father, Theo Scherer was dockworker, and one of the first Dutch socialists. His mother was born in Wemeldingen, a small town in the southwest province of The Netherlands called Zeeland. She stimulated Kees´ fantasy with stories about the beautiful green landscape and the calling of the sea.

Being a young boy, his most precious possession was his Agfa photographic box camera. That was the beginning of his big passion: photography. This youthful love was the foundation for a life dedicated to capturing images. After the Dutch liberation in 1945 Kees Scherer started as freelance photographer for newspapers and magazines. With his spectacular reports about the disastrous Dutch flooding (the ‘Watersnoodramp´ in 1953) and the Hungarian revolt he worked his way up to the top of photojournalism. Together with his friend and colleague Bram Wesman, who worked at the Labour Press, he initiated the foundation of World Press Photo, nowadays the most leading event in the world of photography, with about 15,000 subscribers from nearly 70 different countries every year.

Soon Kees Scherer became a photojournalist who, travelling all over the world, became the eyes of the readers of Dutch general-interest magazines. For many years he published in the Dutch magazines Margriet and Avenue. Besides making reports Scherer also produced many photographical books. In The Netherlands alone he published more than twenty books. For Elsevier magazine he created an impressive series of books in which he visualized the beauty of the cities and the power of nature in the different Dutch provinces.

His hometown Amsterdam had a special place in his heart, and in his files. ´In this part of his photographical oeuvre his fascination for the dynamics of light in pictures is eminent. Backlight and the play of light and shade dominate his work.´ This writes Mattie Boom, M.A, conservator at the Dutch Rijksmuseum. ‘Thus he creates an objective statement about the essence of things, without wanting to make a point, and therefore his work is more poetical than anecdotal. Scherer was mainly driven by exploring and exploiting the essence of the medium photography, and less by the content or subject ‘

The same day his book ‘Zuiderzee, dood water, nieuw leven´ came out, Scherer was hit by a stroke. Since then he was no longer able to speak, write or make photos. He was admitted in hospice ‘Het Zonnehuis´ in Amstelveen, where he died on January 19th, 1993.