Conducts research and collects data on the global history of labour, workers, and labour relations

Ewald Vanvugt, Traveller, photographer, and publicist

Ewald Vanvugt's archive and photographs collection which he has donated to the IISH over the years, were recently made accessible for research.

Ewald Vanvugt was born in ‘s-Hertogenbosch during the middle of World War II.
After secondary school he dreamt, as a child of the 1960s, of faraway exotic places. Together with his friend Peter ten Hoopen, between 1968 and 1971 he travelled overland through Iran and Afghanistan to India. In the 1970s he undertook a series of long journeys through North and South America. His love of India and his later passion for Indonesia would help shape his life. In 1983-1984 Vanvugt moved to Bali, where he lived with his wife and two children.
From that point on, he was closely engaged with the colonial past of the Netherlands. His research resulted in several publications, including the latest: Roofstaat. Wat iedere Nederlander moet weten (2016).

The Vanvugt archive contains correspondence with family and friends, including Peter ten Hoopen, Zen Buddhist Philip Renard, and British author Paula Weideger.
Letters written in London in 1969-1970 by Yvonne Apol, the first wife of photographer and filmmaker Johan van der Keuken, make clear how, through Vanvugt, she became captivated by Sufi master Fazal Inayat Khan, entering a cosmic world.
There are also letters written in 1970-1971 by Dick Polak, who grew up in Amsterdam and later became a famous photographer in London, and Polak’s wife, the Hungarian-born actress and fashion designer Edina Ronay.
Much more recent is the email correspondence covering the period 2004-2006 with Lucine, a woman from New York who travelled with Vanvugt through India for six months in 1970.
In 2005 Vanvugt flew to Vanuatu, an archipelago in Oceania, where Lucine has lived for several decades.
In 2007 Vanvugt published his diary, Weerzien met Lucine. Een dag- en nachtboek uit de Stille Zuidzee.

In addition to this correspondence, the archive contains numerous manuscripts and documents concerning Vanvugt’s projects, such as the Sunday Paper, mimeographed in the summer of 1977 in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, seven issues of which were published.

Vanvugt’s collection of photographs contains hundreds of images – the vast majority are in black and white – and several thousand negatives and contact sheets. These photos and negatives reflect the dozens of trips that Vanvugt made during the course of his life. Vanvugt photographed in particular the miraculous everyday world of beggars, drinkers, hashish smokers, lepers, transvestites, and others.

The Vanvugt archive was inventoried by Caro Matulessya, an intern at the IISH, for her Bachelor’s course in Cultural Heritage at the Reinwardt Academy, Amsterdam School of the Arts.

Vanvugt’s photographs collection was organized by Harriet Stroomberg.

Bouwe Hijma

Posted: 
22 August 2016