By Mikel van den Boogaard
It’s hard to imagine when you visit modern-day Amsterdam, but behind its overpriced coffee cafes and natural wine bars with designer chairs, there is still some of that old gritty Amsterdam left. Modern-day Amsterdam can sometimes feel like an amusement park for tourists or simply a bit trashier version of Copenhagen. Amsterdam is always under construction, always has a need for improvement, and while the very old is often well preserved, well preserved can often also be interpreted as stripped of any character. The Dutch language has been enriched with many words originating from Amsterdam street slang, of which “branie” might be among its most famous. But visiting Amsterdam today, there is very little of that branie left. Everything is calm, collected, organized–colored between the lines.
It hasn’t always been like this. Amsterdam was once the universal center of fringe culture. It was the city of the Nozems and Provos, the artists, the drugs and whores. Until relatively recently, Amsterdam was a city where the outcasts were celebrated. And everyone was united in their differences.
While Amsterdam has mostly been stripped of this raggedness, the close observer might still find some remnants of its bygone glory. While the Snakebuildings have been demolished to make way for Soho House and fancy apartments, Vrankrijk is still standing strong across the street. While Noord has turned former factories and farmlands into yuppie entertainment areas, you might accidentally come across an illegal rave here and there as long as you keep your ears open to the pounding bass of a deep techno tune. The Red Light District has mostly been cleaned up, with the city paying for Haring Arie’s lifelong pension and replacing his brothels with coffee bars, fashion stores, and indistinguishable tourist traps. We tend to hate these tourists, rightfully so perhaps, but through their intoxicated horniness, they might be some of the last bearers of lawless culture in Amsterdam.
While the scousers peruse the illuminated canals in their Air Max 95s and shorts (no matter how cold it is), one of old Amsterdam’s prized remnants is under these steps. A four-kilometer-long tunnel pierces right through the Red Light District, starting at Central Station and ending at Amstel Station. It was the first subway line in Amsterdam, and it was a beautiful blank canvas for those interested in making subway art.
That subway line should not be taken for granted. Beyond the fact that it is the main lifeline connecting Amsterdam Zuidoost to the rest of the city, it is also a monument to a turbulent time in the Dutch capital. The squatters, once an integral part of the fabric of Amsterdam, were against the tunnel. In a city with an extreme housing shortage (sounds familiar), the squatters wanted to protect several houses in good condition from being demolished for the construction of the subway line. The plan was for the whole neighborhood (the former Jewish quarter, which had been neglected since the end of WWII) to be redesigned with a new city hall, subway stations, and a four-lane high-speed road connecting the Wibautstraat to the Prins Hendrikkade.
In 1975, several riots broke out, with protests, barricades, and even a foiled bomb attack. Amsterdam used over 500 armed police officers in an attempt to evacuate the houses, and over twenty people, both protesters and police, were severely injured.
The speedway was only built in half, with the Wibautstraat as a watered-down version. After the riots, the tunnel was completed, but the city halted an extension of the expansive subway network plans. Whether people liked it or not, Amsterdam was on its way to becoming a modern city. But the riots halted it for at least a little while. The East Line started riding for the first time in 1977 and became fully operational in 1980. The word “Metro” was long taboo in Amsterdam, and subsequent lines were labeled as “Sneltrams” (Fast Tramlines).
A certain percentage of the eventual East Line construction cost was meant for the realization of public art in the tunnel and its stations. The Amsterdam municipality commissioned several artists for it, and the Nieuwmarkt station exhibited artworks by Cobra artist Jan Sierhuis commemorating the Nieuwmarkt riots. And then there is the tunnel itself, for which the city commissioned Peter Struycken, Wladimir Zwaagstra, Caveto, Woody van Amen, and Bob Bonies. Each was responsible for their own part, which connected throughout the tunnel through an intricate pattern of lines and shapes, creating a colorful illusion only visible while riding the train. The collective artwork is still there, underneath all the graffiti, and it could be seen as one of the biggest artworks in the Netherlands. That is, if it was visible.
While Amsterdam commissioned these artists to work on the subway line, the real artwork emerged during the decades after. As this new phenomenon crossed the ocean from New York, graffiti became an underground sensation in Amsterdam, and this new tunnel became a popular workshop. As time progressed, the tunnel artwork transformed into a background line for people like Prikkeldraadje and HIGH. The tunnel slowly became one giant gesamtkunstwerk, a growing graffiti organism that relegated the tunnel piece to a mere background palette.
People like Boris Tellegen and Aldo van den Broek, who perhaps were once part of this anonymous art collective, knew about it. Tellegen, also known as Delta, is widely considered one of the most important graffiti artists from the Netherlands. He successfully transitioned his signature style into “legal art” with international success. Van den Broek, part of a younger generation, also switched from vandalism to fine art, with dark and moody artworks that have found an international audience.
Those close to these two know they can be trusted with finding the ragged edges in Amsterdam (and the rest of the world), and so they descended down the steps of Amstel Station. Like a couple of graffiti archeologists, the two went into the ground to find hidden treasures from history. They found two walls of four kilometers each, untouched by municipal cleaning services or renovations. A remnant of the old Amsterdam. A giant puzzle of pieces, tags and scratches, making up Dutch art history.
The tunnel between Central Station and Amstel Station is a gallery of honor for Dutch graffiti. It features work made by names like ZAP, Oase, Again, Zedz, Yalt, Same, High, Mellie, Rhyme, Dr. Rat, and Walking Joint–a who’s who of the (Dutch) Graffiti canon. The fact that it is left untouched is a miracle, considering how eager Amsterdam usually is to clean its graffiti. As writer Joris van Casteren says in his piece for Het Parool from April 2024, the question is: for how long?
The entrance to the tunnel is hidden, and entering it is at your own risk. Out of noble care for the culture and in a completely selfless act of preservation, Tellegen and van den Broek went into the tunnel to photograph the whole stretch. On a random Saturday night, they spent roughly four hours capturing the walls on both sides every five meters, making over 2000 photos.
The photos are collected in the book Tunnel Vision, now available via Ruyzdael Publishing. The book contains 240 pages going in both directions, with photos by van den Broek and Tellegen and essays by Dumaar Novyork, John Prop, Reaze and Joris van Casteren. As the description says, the book is interesting for many people.
“For contemporary archaeologists, the photos are to be studied; which identities in the form of tags and pieces can be recognized, and then through stories to try to find out about these individuals and their identities. In a larger perspective, the publication unlocks a part of the city that is inaccessible or unnoticed by almost everyone.”
The word graffiti comes from the Italian word graffito, which was first used by archaeologists and antiquaries in the 1800s. With Tunnel Vision, Tellegen and van den Broek honor the etymology of graffiti, finding remnants of Dutch graffiti history and, equally important, the last remnants of the ragged old Amsterdam.
Header photo credits: Before the construction of the Oostlijn, many houses were demolished in the Nieuwmarkt neighborhood. The situation in 1975. (Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed)