This year marks Amsterdam’s 750th jubilee and, this month, the 80th anniversary of the Netherlands’ liberation. In honour of this occasion, Foam’s The Underground Camera (De Ondergedoken Camera) showcases images captured by a group of photographers who became known by the same name. Sombre, disquieting, heart-wrenching – with an occasional dash of humanity’s warmth in harsh times – this collection takes viewers on a journey through the “Hunger Winter” of 1944-1945 in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. These historical records honour the resistance group’s role in documenting persecution, famine, and celebration alike, and invite us to consider how the past, present, and future bleed into one another.
The exhibition is a clever combination of media, featuring mostly primary sources from the wartime period, but also videos and text that contextualise the historical background of particular sections. Such comprehensive presentation welcomes history noobs such as myself, while the extensive capillaries of books, photographs, and letters encased in glass-topped tables will surely satisfy the avid researcher.
The saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” is old, perhaps a cliché, but it certainly rings true in this collection. Within the suffocating silence that began in the spring of 1942, amateur photographs served as capsules of truth, carefully tucked away from the oppressors. In the nest of Michelangelostraat 36, the photographers later known as The Underground Camera recorded the isolation, deportation, and concealment of Jewish Dutch residents under persecution. The six-pointed star – a symbol of imposed inferiority, marking individuals for deportation; a baby stroller – used to transport weapons by resistance fighters; bread – so scarce that it required police to guard.
Records of lived realities by Cas Oorthuys, Charles Breijer, Ad Windig, and numerous other photographers reflect the many co-existing layers of a time named mostly in its suffering. Even amongst chilling displays of starving children and bodies in carts, light was still possible. A huge grin spreads on the face of a woman picking up spilled coal – a valuable resource – at the ferries across the Ij. The mischievousness glimmering from the eyes of children who noticed the photographer as they removed tram blocks from the tracks to use as fuel. Strength, love, and play persist even – or perhaps more than ever – during the darkest of ages, enduring communities in and through adversity.
Once again strolling by the Museumplein, the Ij, and other corners whose ghosts the exhibition offers glimpses of, one becomes aware that the scars of the past may be rendered obscure in the day-to-day life. But the land, the city, the air remember. And do we remember? What do we do with this remembrance? The present feels at once so far and so close to the past. As much as it seems that we are losing our footing, The Underground Camera presents an observation of the power we hold in powerlessness. Rosina Lui, 4th May 2025
The Underground Camera continues at Foam in Amsterdam until 2nd October 2025.
