Sanne Sannes was a tripped-out fashion art photographer who lived his short life hard and fast. After almost four decades of obscurity, a unique collection from the oeuvre of the Dutch photographer Sanne Sannes (1937-1967) comes to light again. 

Sannes, during his brief photographic career in the sixties, became renown for his taste for the erotic, his fascination with women and seduction. His imagery recalls the atmosphere of the sixties, which acted as an impulse both for his models and for his own talent in photography.   

After his untimely death at the age of 30 in a car accident, with only an eight year photographic career of innovating art, Sannes oeuvre is still on par with internationally acclaimed Dutch photographers such as Gerard Fieret and Ed van der Elsken, who in the sixties defined Dutch black-and-white photography.

What's great to discover with these vintage prints is the amount of fun that Sannes had during the shooting, and even more so afterwards in the darkroom. He experimented with painting and scratching on his negatives. He superimposed multiple negatives to get some wild overlapping imagery. He exposed a print multiple times to get different burned-in effects. And he did a lot of handwork on the photos after he printed them. He was clearly in love with the medium of photography.

Jim Hughes, editor of Camera 35, wrote: “Sannes, a controversial Dutch photographer, did not make easy photographs. Certainly, he did not make pretty photographs. I’m not even sure he made photographs. He made explorations of people, of their outsides and their insides, and sent back picture postcards of their psyches.”

Sannes work is better known through his publications. One of his best known books was called Sex a Gogo. More provocative than most books of nudes in its day, it remains a fantastic period piece even today. It was his second book, published posthumously in 1969.

His first book, Oog om Oog (Eye for Eye) a notable work in the Dutch beeldroman (photonovel) tradition, had been published a few years earlier. Sex a Gogo was much more light hearted, a Pop-Art sexual manual, complete with psychedelic collages and cartoon speech balloons. It was heavily influenced by the many underground magazines that were a feature of the 1960s culture/scene.

Parr & Badger wrote in The Photobook, A History, Vol. I: “The book’s montages were devised by its designer Walter Steevensz, who took over the project when Sannes died, and it is his vision as much as the photographer’s that is evidenced in this typically 1960s comedy of sexual mores. Yet however comical, Sex a Gogo never allows us to forget about its erotic intentions.”

— Images and most of this text courtesy of HUP Gallery in Amsterdam.

FOAM_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam will organize an exhibition about the work of Sanne Sannes in 2009.