erwin Olaf

Born in 1959 in Hilversum in the Netherlands, Erwin Olaf is a world renowned artist, photographer and filmmaker living in Amsterdam.

An artist on the border of contemporary art and photography, Olaf emerged on the international art scene in 1988, when his series Chessmen was awarded the first prize in the Young European Photographer competition.  In 1987 he began working with film, which has since then continued to be an important medium for his art. In the past years Olaf's films have been screened at several leading museums and film festivals all around the world.

Olaf's visually sophisticated and conceptually provocative style has been embraced by the advertising world. His worldwide campaigns for Diesel Jeans and Heineken won him the coveted Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival for Advertising. In 2010 Louis Vuitton commissioned Olaf for a portrait series in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. In 2008 he received a Lucie Award from the United States of America for his achievements in photography. Recently he won the prestigious Dutch State price of the Arts, Johannes Vermeer Award 2011. The jury selected him because of the high quality of his entire body of work.

This autumn his new book named Own, from Lido Books, Amsterdam, (2011) provides a retrospective of his work.

His visual universe and his aesthetic obsessions best suit the world of fashion and luxury.