Lot Essay
Trained initially as an architect, Oorthuys became interested in photography while going to school in Haarlem in 1928. There he witnessed the influences of the the avant-garde movements such as the Bauhaus, de Stijl, and Fotografie und Film. In 1930 he was hired as an architect by the city of Amsterdam but lost his job soon after during the depression. He continued to make pictures and photomontages for the Communist party in Holland, and became involved in the anti-fascist movement. He came to the attention of Eva Besnyö through his work in Dutch publications. In 1935 he worked for Wij news magazine and joined the Union of Artists in Defense of Cultural Rights (BKVK). He resigned from the magazine in 1940 after the Nazi's pressured the magazine to adopt an anti-semitic attitude. Joining the Dutch resistance movement, he engaged in various underground activities such as forging identification papers and espionage photography. His efforts were found out and he and his resistance group were arrested in 1944. Released on his own recognizance, he soon went underground and joined the Hidden Camera. While hiding his camera in a coat or bag, Oorthuys went on to make some of the most alarming pictures of the suffering endured during the War in Holland. After the War he covered the Nuremberg trials, traveled the world on assignment and his work was exhibited internationally. Upon his death in 1975, over a half million negatives survived.