eration name. This name, at Klein’s initiative, was
later changed to Particam Pictures. The Particam
crew showed a distinctive style due to Klein’s tech-
nical skills. They were able to avoid the use of flash
by slightly heating the developer, which produced a
much more sensitive film. Being able to photo-
graph in darkened theaters or situations allowed
the Particam photographers to corner the market
in all kinds of stage photography, and the group
had a virtual monopoly for theatre, opera, ballet,
cabaret, and circus photography. Klein began
showing his works in photographic exhibitions
around this time, including in ‘‘Foto ‘48’’ at the
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
In 1953, the Netherlands was confronted with the
worst natural disaster in its history, known as the Big
or Great Flood. During an extremely strong storm
in the Atlantic, dikes were breached and the North
Sea flooded the southern part of the country. One-
thousand, eight-hundred and thirty-five people were
killed, 47,000 houses were destroyed, and 139 kilo-
meters of dikes were damaged. Together with Ed van
der Elsken and photojournalist Dolf Kruger, among
others, Klein’s work showed his country and the
world the tragedy that had especially affected agri-
cultural areas. His pictures of the flooding were
published in the newspaperDe Spiegel.
Because of his formal approach to composition,
Klein was included in the landmarkSubjektive Foto-
grafie IIexhibition in 1954, but the Dutchman never
really let go of reality to move toward the abstraction
demonstrated by many of the other photographer who
showed on that occasion. His work always retained
recognizable elements and was never fully abstract.
Even so, Klein’s work was never as popular as that
of many of his photojournalist or fine-arts contempor-
aries, making him somewhat of an outsider.
A subject that Klein especially mastered was birds
in flight; he had the remarkable ability to position
the birds seemingly exactly where he wanted them to
capture the most dramatic images. This talent pro-
voked one of his assistants to remark that Klein
always carried a few birds in his pocket. Klein, how-
ever, was merely very patient and would wait for
what Henri Cartier-Bresson called ‘‘the decisive mo-
ment,’’ that is, until the composition matched what
he had in mind. But unlike the French master, for
Klein the work was not finished with the snap of the
shutter. He worked hard in the darkroom to achieve
his desired contrast so that they achieved their dis-
tinctive graphic appearance. Works such asZebra,
1957, showing a zebra from the rear, exemplify this
practice. The zebra’s stripes are sharply etched across
the picture plane, creating a pattern that almost
obscures the organic shape of the animal.
The work conducted by Klein in the darkroom
can be fruitfully compared to the efforts of his
countryman, painter Piet Mondriaan, when he
developed his trademark abstract style. In a famous
1912 series of paintings that documents his move
to abstraction, Mondriaan purged the naturalistic
image of an apple tree until he was left with a set of
geometrical shapes. In the same way, Klein repeat-
edly adjusted the level of contrast until his pictures
were pure and clean, emphasizing the straight lines
and planes he looked for when he was shooting.
In 1956, Klein left Particam Pictures and set up
his own studio. It was in this period, Klein combined
his preferences for landscape and industrial photo-
graphy and made, at his own initiative, his most
famous works on the Delta engineering project, pub-
lished in two books:Delta. Poort van Europa(Delta.
Gateway to Europe) and Delta. Stromenland in
beweging(Delta. Land of Streams in Motion). This
project, which allowed Klein to continue the theme
of the struggle against water, which so shapes the
Dutchpsychethatheexploredintheaftermathof
the Big Flood, was aimed to prevent flooding. It
consisted of the creation of major infrastructure in
the splendid natural setting of the southern part of
the Netherlands. Klein once again looked for the
vast planes of the landscape and the rhythmic quali-
ties of the dikes and bridges. With a great deal of
patience, vision, and technical skill, he created a
distinct look at the massive interventions in the land-
scape meant to prevent a disaster like the one he
witnessed a decade earlier. Although Klein always
looked for subjects that matched his style, it is wrong
to look at his pictures as mere graphic tricks. His
work displays his belief in progress and offers a very
personal and optimistic view.
In the years that followed the completion of the
Delta photographs, Klein worked for the newspaper
Algemeen Handelsblad and for Dutch companies
such as Shell and Philips. Not surprisingly, these
and other companies welcomed the optimistic spirit
of his photography. Besides, his style fitted the mod-
ern industrial architecture and the visual taste of
the 1960s and 1970s. Later on, he frequently went
abroad, with travel grants and on assignment for
different government agencies.
While Klein was not active as a photographer at
the end of his life, it was at that time his influence
and importance were recognized and appreciated. In
1982, he received the Capi-Lux Alblas Prize. In 1986,
a major retrospective exhibition was mounted in
Breda, the Netherlands. In 1996, Aart Klein received
Fund for the Visual Arts, Design and Architecture’s
oeuvre prize. When Aart Klein died in 2001 at the
age of 92 his pictures of the 1953 flooding and theKLEIN, AART