Erwin Olaf

"There is a bit of Mad Men, a touch of Norman Rockwell and even a little John Waters in Dutch photograher Olaf's work. His charged narrative scenarios - desolate women, brooding boxers - are portrayed in lush photographs in this sumptuous fabric-bound volume." -- Naomi West --Harper's Bazaar"The people in his images seem to be caught while standing on an emotional precipice--stuck in the moment before they must react to a crisis... The images are seductive and mysterious, inviting us to fill in the awkward spaces and moments of silence with our own narrative." -- Lindsay Sakraida --American Photo"Good-looking enough for a magazine spread and cinematic enough for a movie... these photographs are love letters to the aesthetics of the early 1960s - all bouffant hair, demure tones, bakelite and nylon. The stereotypes are all here too - the housewife, the school girl... trapped in perfect but sterile lives and looking thoroughly nonplussed with their lot. As a result, Olaf's scenes are taut with tension - his characters teetering on a knife edge between composure and collapse." -- Holly Kyte --The Week"The methodically detailed worlds created by Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf are muted melodramas, inhabited by mannequin-like creatures in immaculate settings... The ultra-stylized individuals convey issues of beauty, loneliness and despair through a breathless meditation of tone and shape." -- Gordon Gee --Tokion Magazine"Erwin Olaf's work inhabits a twilight world often tempered with an unnerving stillness as his subjects appear frozen in time before the shutter clicks, as if it is recording the strangeness rather than driving it... Olaf's ability to construct multiple narratives within each scene takes the eyes around each space to observe details within. I implore you to admire the beauty of his aesthetic and suggest that you linger on the elements within each image at leisure." -- Laura Noble -- London Independent Photography