This picture has been published in 1967 in De AVRObode (a Dutch broadcasting association magazine)
This picture has been taken in 1967 by the Dutch photographer Louis van Paridon on the Amsterdam flea market Waterlooplein. The market was situated somehow different in those years, there was a long stretch of market in front of the Mozes and Aaron Church running in the direction of the bridge over the Amstel river (nowadays there are tram tracks at that spot). The television sets you see are the second or third generation television sets which still show that the first television sets (from the thirties) were using round cathode tube monitors. It is not yet the time of color television that comes a decade later to the Netherlands, but the shops had newer models with almost rectangular screens and more channels, hence out they went these obsolete receivers. I did find this picture during one of my regular probings in image archives. The house and floor where I live now can be seen in the upper right hand corner, the second floor of the house which shows three window panes plus a bay window (erker). I know the flea-market since 1958 when I would take a bus or hitch hike from the nearby town of Haarlem to go to the Waterlooplein and browse around (I would stay away illegal from school to indulge in this favorite pass time). The flea market at that time was bigger, more messy, society less affluent, so young couples, students, bohemians and the like were dependent on this market to equip their rooms, to dress and find reading and listening materials (it was a time when the highly breakable 78 rotation per minute shellac gramophone records were dumped massively).
We are now several generations of living people and their ever changing contraptions further and if the under earth of the Waterlooplein would have had a memory it could draw up long lists of other obsolete pieces of equipment waiting for a possible new life after having been discarded…
Louis van Paridon (an informed Dutch person can see that this must be a catholic man) has made some reportage for the magazine ‘Katholieke Illustratie (Catholic Illustration) in de early sixties on Dutch nozems (teddy boys) which are partly documentary, partly arranged somehow by the photographer (at least it looks like that). Such photographs remain hidden in the big photo-archives with copyright laws as a fence. I will start to post some of my selections on the internet to set them free on and meet receptive minds of younger generations who can look back and maybe recognize something in the past of their actual youth. The National Archive of the Netherlands boast on their web site that they have so and so many million pictures, but they offer just tiny versions of them to the general public. It is time to reformulate what is to be done for our cultural heritage by putting more and more things in the public domain. The copyright lobby has been far too influential in the copyright and other control barriers. We have a cultural gulag at hand and must start to set free its prisoners….
the limping messenger 