event

Opening The Underground Camera

In honour of Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary and the 80th commemoration of the Netherlands’ liberation, Foam proudly presents The Underground Camera. This powerful exhibition features images taken by the eponymous group of photographers who bravely documented life in Amsterdam during the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944–1945. Their striking photographs offer a rare and intimate glimpse into the daily realities of war, the Nazi occupation, and the courageous acts of the resistance.

The exhibition will be opened on Thursday 1 May by the mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema. Join us from 17.30 until 21.00 hrs for this celebratory event at Foam.

About the exhibition

With their photographs, The Underground Camera group made a significant contribution to the image of the Second World War. The photographers were recruited by members of the resistance, with the aim of informing the Dutch government in London. They worked independently and under the dangerous conditions of an occupied city, with hard-to-obtain, often poor-quality equipment. The exhibition provides an impressive picture of the consequences of hunger and cold in the dismantled Amsterdam at the end of the war.

The group of photographers included Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, Charles Breijer, Kryn Taconis, and Ad Windig, among others.

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The Underground Camera is the result of a close collaboration with the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. A publication by the same name, written by NIOD-researchers René Kok and Erik Somers, was released in March 2025. The exhibition has been co-curated by Hripsimé Visser, former curator of photography at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, in collaboration with exhibition designer Jeroen de Vries.

This exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of Vfonds. V Fund is the National Fund for Peace, Freedom and Veterans.

The images from this exhibition are on loan from, among others, the Maria Austria Instituut (MAI), the NIOD Institute for war, holocaust and genocide studies, the National Museum of Photography in Rotterdam (NFM) and the Special Collections of the Leiden University Libraries


Illegale opname vanuit fietstas van commandopost Kriegsmarine, genomen vanaf het Emmaplein de Emmalaan in, Amsterdam, 1944

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Opening The Underground Camera