One Way Ticket to the Netherlands - Leonard Freed, Photographs 1958-1962

Amsterdam's Tropenmuseum presents a new exhibition of photography by American Magnum photographer Leonard Freed. One Way Ticket to the Netherlands runs from 18 June to 3 October.

Immigrant photography

Between 1958 and 1962, Freed (1929-2006) took pictures of Moluccans and Dutch-Indonesians living in the Netherlands who had arrived in the country from India since 1945.

Human approach

Freed rose to acclaim due to his socio-historical, human approach to photography and documented the arrival of the immigrants, the reunion with other family members and their daily life.

Alien in Amsterdam

Leonard Freed lived in Amsterdam from 1957 to 1970 and was active in the same artistic circle as Schinkichi Tajiri, Ed van der Elsken and Karel Appel. Freed felt like an outsider in Amsterdam, just as in New York, where he grew up in a Jewish immigrant family. Partly due to experiences in his youth, Freed focused his lens primarily on people who shared his situation.