Is Heaven Red?

Paul de Nooijer has been photographing for more than half a century. After his studies at the Academy for Industrial Design in Eindhoven (1960-1965), he worked for Hitweek and De Gruyter, among others. It took a while before he came out with his autonomous work, but after that it went quickly: since 1974 he has been exhibiting at home and abroad. As early as 1982 (in the introduction to Dumont Photo 4, Photography in Europe heute) Dr. Ingeborg Leijerzapf signaled the pioneering work with the Polaroid SX-70. He was also one of the first to use a wide-angle lens. In 1989 he was one of the few Dutch photographers to have a solo exhibition at the Center Pompidou, Paris. The work is now in numerous museums and important (private) collections. The Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam recently added more than thirty works by the De Nooijers to its collection for the first time. Over the years, not only has the photographic art of Paul, Menno (collaborating since 1989) and Françoise risen to new heights, the genre of staged photography, autonomous photography, has also matured. This publication was made possible in part by a financial contribution from the VandenEnde Foundation.