The Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf, who has died aged 64 following a lung transplant, straddled the world of art, advertising and fashion photography with a sumptuous cinematic and painterly aesthetic. Into his meticulously staged works he introduced subtle imperfections to stir disquiet in his audience: “There should be a riddle in every powerful image, so you are intrigued and invited to look over and over again.”
He was influenced by the storytelling power of cinema and the emotion it could provoke. He wanted to create an open-ended narrative in a single shot, to capture the moment between what just happened and what is about to happen. In 2014 he said: “I used to want to conquer the world with strong images, but nowadays I want to say to the viewer: I’ll give you the ingredients, you make the story.”
