Ruyzdael Publishing

Publishing gives this material a lasting form. A book can bring images, voices and histories together, create connections between them and make knowledge available beyond the moment in which it was produced. Selection, sequence, text, typography and material all influence how a story is understood and what is ultimately passed on.

Ruyzdael works in two ways. Some books open up what already exists: private photographs, sketchbooks, archives and recollections that were never intended for a wider audience, brought together and given context. Other books begin as a project developed for the page. The work does not exist yet, and the publication is the reason it is made. In those projects the form of the book carries the idea, from its size and sequence to the way it is bound and read.

For Ruyzdael, a book is therefore not simply an endpoint. It becomes part of how cultural knowledge is preserved, circulated and passed on. The publications move between the communities they come from and a wider audience interested in art, design and contemporary visual culture, without changing the story for either.

Publishing was never limited to books. Ruyzdael has also released records, a legacy of its early years, when it was founded as a makers’ collective by Ferry van Zijderveld, Duvel and artist and music producer Dimitri Madimin. Releasing music is a form of publishing too: like the books, the records give a lasting form to the undercurrents of street culture.

That record is not held in any single place. Much of this history exists outside formal archives. It lives in personal photographs, collections, memories and conversations. Graffiti itself is often temporary, removed, painted over or lost together with the places where it was made. What remains can be fragmented, scattered or undocumented.

Ruyzdael brings these fragments together through research, interviews, oral history, archival material, writing, editing and design. The aim is to preserve context as well as images, and to make connections that might otherwise remain unseen.

The questions underneath are not neutral. Who is allowed to mark a city, who decides what stays visible, and whose history is eventually kept. Ruyzdael does not argue these points on behalf of the culture. They become visible through the work itself and through the people who made it.

Ruyzdael’s projects often continue beyond the publication itself, through exhibitions, presentations and public programmes. Projects have been presented in museums, archives and cultural institutions including Buro Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the Museum of the City of New York, the Stadsarchief Amsterdam, the Groninger Museum and the Museum of Graffiti in Miami. Tunnel Vision was also presented in collaboration with Open Monumentendag Amsterdam in an underground location opposite Amsterdam Centraal.

Other projects have taken the form of exhibitions, installations and public presentations at spaces including W139 in Amsterdam, Galerie Larik in Utrecht, WallWorks in the Bronx and Urban Spree in Berlin. These settings allow the material in the books to enter different contexts and bring the stories into direct contact with new audiences.

More informal launches and signings have taken place at independent cultural spaces including Sexyland in Amsterdam, the Utrechtse Boekenbar, Le Grand Jeu in Paris and Studio 6 in New York. Together, these different settings reflect the way Ruyzdael operates: rooted in the culture itself, while creating connections with museums, archives, galleries and audiences beyond it.