Rotterdam Harbour

At the end of the 70s I got the idea of making a series of black and white photographs of the port of Rotterdam. I arrived by train in December 1978 carrying with me about 50 rolls of Tri-x that would be enough to get started with. I did not know anything about the port, neither how it was planned nor where to begin. For me the the doors to the docks opened when I discovered a day centre combined with a café for people working on the lighters at Maashaven. It was called De Zwarte Zwaan (The Black Swan). The lighter men and women took me aboard their vessels and introduced me to the harbour from the sea side, something that gave me the opportunity to quickly get acquainted with the docks. The last time the photographs were shown in a major exhibition was in Berlin 2003 at the Willy Brandt Haus, where I represented The Stockholm Fotoskolan as one of Christer Strömholm’s former students.