Gerard Petrus Fieret (The Hague, Netherlands, 1924-2009)

Gerard Petrus Fieret was an artist, poet, and photographer. Aside from a period of internment in a German hard labor camp during World War II, Fieret lived and worked in The Hague, diving into decades long obsessions with various artistic mediums. Entirely self-taught, Fieret acquired his first camera in 1965 and took pictures at an obsessive rate through the end of the ‘70s. Favoring darkroom experiments over technical perfection, Fieret’s photography has a rough and improvisational quality. His work is well known for its branded surfaces - his paranoia around other artists stealing his work motivated him to print his name and address on each print with a rubber stamp or large ink signatures.