Edited by Aya Musa
256 pages, hardcover, $85
Published by Lannoo Publishers
lannoopublishers.com

Co Rentmeester’s prowess as an Olympic rower allowed him to tackle the comparable discipline of photography after representing the Netherlands in the 1960 Summer Games in Rome. After he shifted to photography, his rapid rise saw him elevated to a staff position at LIFE magazine and a World Press Photo award by 1967—all by the age of 31.

In Co Rentmeester: Witnessing Life, the blueprint-like exhibition catalog published by Amsterdam’s Foam Photography Museum, Rentmeester’s 60-year legacy provides visual evidence of an athlete-artist who excels at responding to what unfolds before him while incorporating the gray areas between perception and reality. From the trenches of Vietnam to the intense flames of the Watts riots to the corridors of the Veterans Hospital in the Bronx, his observational sensibilities served him in a visceral yet nonjudgmental way by placing the viewer in worlds where humanity is naked and exposed.

Rentmeester was shot in Saigon in 1968, ending his time as a war photographer. The injury to his hand shifted the trajectory of his work but did not alter his innate ability to observe universal moments with equal calm and focus, evidenced by his LIFE magazine cover of a snow monkey emerging from an icy lake that became the most popular cover in the magazine’s history. Additionally, he captured the iconic image of the hooded militant who breached the Olympic Village at the Munich games of 1972. Over time, expansion into commercial photography gave Rentmeester the means to employ his rigor and vision to a much larger global audience. —Max Hirshfeld ca