Donation photo archive of Volkskrant Journalist and Photographer Hans Beynon
Can you still remember the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, or the Dutch royal state visit to Indonesia in 1971? These are only a few of the dramatic events covered by Hans Beynon, whose archive of 7.000 photos was recently donated to the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) by his family.
Eyewitness Accounts
Born in in Yogyakarta, journalist and photographer Hans Beynon (1927-2016) lived in the former Dutch East Indies until the age of nineteen, starting his journalistic career as a reporter for the Batavia-based newspaper Java-Bode. From the 1950s he worked as foreign editor and correspondent for de Volkskrant newspaper and travelled to Asia on numerous occasions. His photo archive is accordingly rich in photographs of Asia, ranging from Pakistan to Japan and from the Philippines to India. During his many visits to Indonesia, for instance to cover the impeachment of Sukarno by the People’s Consultative Assembly in 1967, photojournalistic accounts were combined with personal trips to Yogyakarta.
An Asset to the Collection
Hans Beynon’s photo collection is an asset to the existing Asian photo collections of the UBL and the Asian Library, which are primarily focused on the period before 1950. Thanks to the donation of the Beynon collection, a collection of great social and historical importance in itself, a significant amount of Asian photo material has become available for research and education relating to the years 1955-1990.
