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Olie composed views in which old and new fused into
an organic whole. Olie’s photography is also very dif-
ferent from that of the younger generation of pictorial
photographers who sought to render the ‘soul’ of the
city in atmospheric photographs. Employing refi ned
photographic processes, they would often blur the city’s
contours in their hand-crafted prints. In contrast, Olie’s
photographs are lucid images of a tangible world.
After the turn of the century, Olie began to use a
modern, hand-held camera which could take several 9
× 12 cm glass plates. It gave him a new mobility and
allowed him to work in a more casual manner. Olie and
his family were zealous hoarders. Besides the thousands
of photographs, negatives and drawings he left behind,
a veritable mountain of personal material has been
preserved. The Amsterdam city archives purchased
this rich legacy from his heirs in two portions, in 1959
and 1990.
Anneke van Veen
Biography
Jacob Olie was born on 17 October 1834 in Amsterdam,
from a long line of raftsmen and whalers. Trained as a
carpenter and an architectural draughtsman, he taught
drawing at the fi rst technical school in Amsterdam
from 1861 on, and in 1868 became its headmaster. As
a member of the leading architectural societies in the
Netherlands, he studied zealously architectural and art
history and played an active role in the debates on archi-
tectural theory and the concepts of form. He practised
and demonstrated his skills in drawing and design in
many competitions. In 1861 Olie started to photograph
with a daguerreotype-model camera which he had built
himself, using wet-collodion plates. The next four years
he portrayed the dockland and industrial area where
he was born and still lived, choosing unusual subject
matter. He also made many portraits of his family,
friends and acquaintances, and used their homes in the
city center to set up his darkroom equipment and pho-
tograph the views from their windows which in some
cases can be fi tted together to large panoramas. Pres-
sure of work forced him to abandon his pursuit. After
his retirement in 1890 Olie took up photograpy again,
this time on industrial dry-gelatine plates. Until the
age of 70, Olie worked at fever pitch, producing some
3600 photographs of Amsterdam, outlying areas, and
the wide surroundings. He was particularly interested
in the transformation of the capital into a modern city,
focussing on new architecture as an organic part of the
urban context. He never exhibited his photographs, but
projected them as lantern slides to a wide audience. Ja-
cob Olie died in Amsterdam on 25 April 1905. His rich
legacy is kept at the Amsterdam city archives.
See also: Architecture; Domestic and Family
Photography; History: 5. 1860s; History: 8. 1890s;
Lantern Slides; Netherlands; and Topographical
Photography.Further Reading
Aarsman, Hans (introduction), Jacob Olie. Amsterdam gefoto-
grafeerd aan het eind van de 19de eeuw door Jacob Olie
[Amsterdam Photographed at the End of the 19th Century by
Jacob Olie], Amsterdam: De Verbeelding, 1999
Baar, Peter-Paul de, Jacob Olie, fotograaf van Amsterdam. Drie
wandelingen door de stad rond 1900 [Jacob Olie, Photog-
rapher of Amsterdam. Three Walks through the City around
1900], Bussum/ Amsterdam: Thoth, 1999
Boorsma, Anne Marie and Ingeborg Leijerzapf, “Jacob Olie” in
Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse fotografi e in monografi eën
en thema-artikelen [History of Dutch Photography in Mono-
graphs and Subject-Essays], edited by Ingeborg Leijerzapf,
Alphen aan den Rijn/Amsterdam: Samsom, Vol. 5, 1986
Coppens, Jan, Guido Hoogewoud and Deborah Meijers, “Jacob
Olie (1834-1905)” in Jaarboek Amstelodamum [Yearbook
Amstelodamum], 68, 1976, 122-142
Eeghen, I.H. van, Amsterdam in de tweede helft der XIXe eeuw,
gezien door Jacob Olie Jacobsz [Amsterdam in the 2nd Half
of the 19th Century seen by Jacob Olie Jacobsz], Amster dam:
Amstelodamum 1960
Nieuwenhuijzen, Kees (composer), Jacob Olie, Amsterdam
gefotografeerd 1860-1905 [Jacob Olie, Amsterdam Photo-
graphed 1860-1905], Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1973^1 , 1974^2 ,
19743 , 1981^4
Schmidt, Fred (composer), Jacob Olie. Amsterdam en omstreken.
Foto’s 1890-1903 [Jacob Olie. Amsterdam and Surroundings.
Photographs 1890-1903], Amsterdam: De Verbeelding 2002
Veen, Anneke van, “Jacob Olie sees the Museumplein” in Jong
Holland [Young Holland], 15, 1999, 2, 52-57
Veen, Anneke van, Jacob Olie Jbz (1834-1905). Monografi eën
van Nederlandse fotografen 10 [Jacob Olie Jbz (1834-1905),
Monographs on Dutch Photographers 10], Amsterdam: Focus
2000OOSTERHUIS, PIETER (1816–1885)
Topographical and industrial photographer of the
Netherlands
When the artist Pieter Oosterhuis took up photography
he had passed the age of 35, newly married moreover,
and determined to maintain his family from the earnings
of his Atelier Photographique et Daguerréotypique.At
last, he had come out of the shadows of his father, the
successful painter and illustrator Haatje Pieters Ooster-
huis. At the time of the opening of his fi rst studio over
240,000 people were registered in Amsterdam, while
the number of studios was only six, which was very
few compared with cities like Hamburg and Berlin. This
reveals a sense of adventure and a talent for entrepre-
neurship in Oosterhuis, which impression is intensifi ed
by the fact that he was probably one of the very fi rst to
apply the stereo technique in the Netherlands.
Stereo photography had been presented to the Dutch
public for the fi rst time in 1855, at the International