Benjamin Diederik "Bob" Schalkwijk (1933) is a Dutch photographer who lives and works in Mexico since 1959. His lifestyle and travel photography has been called a graphic testimony of Mexico's identity, transformations and continuities. Notable is also his work in architecture and still life photography, especially of objects of art. His archive contains over 600,000 images with a digital catalogue that has obtained public and private funding for its development and dissemination.
Life
Early years
The Netherlands
Family
Schalkwijk was born in Rotterdam on May 6, 1933 to trader Willem Schalkwijk and Sophia Vlielander Hein. Both parents came from patrician families. His mother was grandchild of lawyer and senator Benjamin Marius Vlielander Hein and Catharina Couperus, sister of writer Louis Couperus. His mother was first cousin of Benjamin Marius Telders. Schalkwijk's father and paternal grandfather were importers of vegetable oils. They were amateur photographers.
Education
As a child, Schalkwijk lived through World War II in Wassenaar. He was interested in photography from an early age. He studied the autochrome photographs made by his late grandfather J.P. Schalkwijk. Inspired by his passion, his father bought him a Kodak Brownie and built a darkroom where Schalkwijk spent many hours. The first pictures he was able to sell were made with a Pentax camera. They were concert images of Louis Armstrong in the Concertgebouw on November 2, 1952 when Schalkwijk was 19.
In Haarlem Schalkwijk went to the Hogereburgerschool-B, a science-oriented high school. His final exam in German was based on the book Agfacolor by Heinz Berger. Upon leaving high school, Schalkwijk had to do two years of military service. After that, he embarked on an oil tanker bound for New Orleans to learn how to build pipes for transporting liquids and shipped his Volkswagen Beetle for New York.
Road trip through the United States and Canada
In August 1957, upon arrival in the United States, Schalkwijk took an airplane to New York, picked up his car and started a road trip to fulfill his boyhood dream inspired by reading National Geographic. The trip took him to Houston where he registered for courses in oil pipe design. One of his colleagues prompted him to enroll in Stanford University to study oil engineering. He drove to San Francisco, passed the entry exams and before the start of classes, drove to Calgary in search for a job.
Mexico
An article in the March 1958 issue of Esquire prompted Schalkwijk to visit Ajijic, after which he continued the journey to Mexico-City to study Spanish. Here he made friends who encouraged him to make a living of photography. He was fascinated by the Mezquital Valley and the hospitality of the Otomi people. Schalkwijk returned to Stanford but his interest in oil technology had waned. Toward the end of 1958 he returned to Mexico-City to establish himself as a professional photographer.
Career
Photography
Schalkwijk settled in San Angel in 1959. His neighbour Gemma Taccogna taught him to take pictures of children. These were easy to sell to their parents. She also asked him to take pictures of her papier-mâché artwork. Some of these pictures were later published in Mexican Interiors. He also photographed work by other young artists from the Taccogna group, such as Roger von Gunten and the Honduran sculptor Enrique Miralda. He joined the theater group of Elsie Escobedo, mother of his friend Miguel and sculptor Helen Escobedo. There he met Nina Lincoln, whom he married in 1962. Their honeymoon was to the Ixil region of Guatemala, because his father-in-law, Jackson Stewart Lincoln, had pioneered the study of the use of the ancient Mayan calendar among the Ixil people. This trip motivated them to form a photo archive and to devise a system to identify the films Schalkwijk used.
In the early years of his career, Schalkwijk could not make ends meet with his travel photography or by selling photographs of children to their parents. He took on corporate assignments with Black Star. One was to take pictures of a fertilizer factory in Monclova, Coahuila, and for this he bought a Plaubel Peco Supra II camera for 4 x 5” film, with which he made his first aerial shots. Schalkwijk worked at the Black Star photo agency until 1992.