Frederick Linck was likely right-brained, being a photographer, creative and artistic. He was also left-brained with his methodical capturing of the people around him, on the street or in their daily activities. He often found his subjects in his immediate surroundings. People he met inspired him to ‘communicate through the camera’. After his passing in 2020, his estate donated 150 of his photographs to the Hague Historical Museum. The result is an exhibit providing a unique portrait of that city in the 1970’s. The Hague in the 1970’s was very different from today. It was before the gentrification and the rise of modern buildings. The population was less diverse than today, living their lives in their neighbourhood, shopping on the market or in the traditional stores, butcher, grocer, Fruit & Vegetable vendor, working in the shops, drinking coffee or a beer at the local brown café. Looking at these pictures has a taste of nostalgia, of a world that was and that is no longer. Frederick Linck had the passion to document that world and to give us, fifty years on, an account of how it was back then. Although I don’t have specific connections with that city at that time, I still feel the value of the sharing for the future generations.
