75 400 Photography Keuken J van der
- Owner's entry on upper pastedown. Wrapper trifle worn along extremities; sm. dent in backcover.
= Parr/ Badger I, p.244: "In 1955, the 17-year old Joan van der Keuken caused a stir in Dutch publishing with his book Wij zijn 17 (We are 17), prefiguring the even greater furore that would greet the publication of Ed van der Elsken's Een liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint Germain des Prés (Love on the Left Bank) a year leater. Van der Keuken's book was as innovative as Van der Elsken's in its treatment of a section of society - not a class exactly, but a societal group - that was beginning to be regarded as a class apart. (...) The Beat Generation, the Beatnik movement, James Dean - the original rebel without a cause - and a pouting, gyrating phenomenon called Elvis Presley, drew the world's attention to the fact that, since the war, a new alien species seemed to have been dropped on to the planet - the teenager. Van der Keuken's two books, Wij zijn 17 and Achter Glas (Behind Glass, 1957), caught this mood perfectly. Whilst perhaps not stream-of-consciousness in style, they certainly are in terms of attitude, capturing a moment's experience in which nothing much happens except for the moment itself (...)."