The ex­hi­bi­tion is com­prised of Rot­gans' finest wide-angle shots, il­lus­trat­ing the Nether­lands in the 60-70s – the pe­riod of the eco­nomic growth of the coun­try and thriv­ing. The pho­tographs pre­sent clas­sic Dutch city and land­scape views. This part of Rot­gans' pho­to­graphic works has been stud­ied and pre­sented to the wider au­di­ence only in the be­gin­ning of the XXI cen­tury, when new dig­i­tal prints were made from the old neg­a­tives.

Frits J. Rot­gans was trained as a com­mer­cial de­signer and started to work with pho­tog­ra­phy as an am­a­teur in the 1930s. Hav­ing stud­ied the ba­sics of pho­tog­ra­phy on his own, Rot­gans ex­plored var­i­ous tech­niques. He ex­per­i­mented with colour pho­tog­ra­phy, and in 1942 made hun­dreds of colour slides of the Ger­man oc­cu­pa­tion in Am­s­ter­dam – a unique pho­to­graphic and his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment.

After the war, as a self-trained pho­tog­ra­pher Rot­gans de­vel­oped into a much sought-after pro­fes­sional. His pho­tographs are dis­tin­guished by thor­oughly cre­ated idea, well ad­justed com­po­si­tion and im­pec­ca­ble tech­ni­cal pro­duc­tion. Among Rot­gans' favourite sub­jects were the har­bors of Am­s­ter­dam and Rot­ter­dam, in­land nav­i­ga­tion and air traf­fic (one of the most fa­mous books was Rot­ter­dam, stad en haven (Rot­ter­dam, city and port), 1959. Among his clients were big com­pa­nies like dock­yards, the Royal Dutch Air­lines and the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties of Am­s­ter­dam and Rot­ter­dam.

In order to test the lim­its of vi­sion, Rot­gans con­tin­ues to work with panoramic shots and even suc­ceeds to con­struct 15 unique cam­eras. Those in­stru­ments were com­piled from other cam­era parts and ply­wood and used with large for­mat neg­a­tives. He gave them names like 'Tin-Frizzie' and 'Rot­gans's Ideal', as if each one had an own char­ac­ter. Some of them are kept in the col­lec­tion of the Nether­lands Fo­to­mu­seum.

The pro­ject is arranged with sup­port of the Min­istry of Cul­ture of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion within the year of Rus­sia-Nether­lands 2013

With the in­for­ma­tion sup­port of the Con­sulate Gen­eral of the Nether­lands in St. Pe­ters­burg