Scheveningen, The Hague, Netherlands
AA-2026-5CC37A
On the image
She has positioned herself exactly where the postcard photographer would have stood, the whole armature of Scheveningen Pier fanned out behind her like a stage set built expressly for tourist snapshots. The pier's observation tower, raised only a few years earlier as the resort's proud answer to the question nobody had asked, does its job of looking modern and vaguely spacefaring against a sky that refuses to cooperate.
Her wicker bag and belted coat are doing quiet, serious work here, the 1960s having decided that a woman on holiday should still look assembled even with bare feet in wet sand. The Cinzano and Philips signage strung along the pier's restaurant pavilions announces, without irony, that Dutch leisure and Dutch industry were now official partners in the business of having a nice time by the sea.
Behind her a small cluster of other visitors stands at the tideline doing nothing in particular, which was rather the point of the whole enterprise. She looks straight at the camera with the patient expression of someone who has been told to hold still for one more picture before they can go get chips.
The historian's note
Scheveningen Pier, on the North Sea coast adjoining The Hague, opened in its modern form in 1961, replacing an earlier structure destroyed during the Second World War. Its centrepiece observation tower, visible here rising above the pier's walkway, became an immediate emblem of postwar Dutch seaside redevelopment and was widely photographed as a symbol of the resort's modernization.
The advertising visible on the pier's pavilions, including sponsorship from Cinzano and Philips, reflects the period's practice of corporate branding integrated directly into public leisure architecture, a common feature of European resort piers in the 1960s. Scheveningen was, at this time, one of the principal beach destinations for both Dutch residents and international visitors travelling through the Netherlands.
The pier and its tower remain standing today, though substantially altered and rebuilt in later decades, making this view a record of the structure's original 1960s form.
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Woman with Wicker Handbag, Scheveningen Pier, Netherlands, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-5CC37A. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/woman-with-wicker-handbag-scheveningen-pier-netherlands-1960s.
@misc{aaAA20265CC37A,
title = {Woman with Wicker Handbag, Scheveningen Pier, Netherlands, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-5CC37A},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/woman-with-wicker-handbag-scheveningen-pier-netherlands-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - Woman with Wicker Handbag, Scheveningen Pier, Netherlands, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-5CC37A UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/woman-with-wicker-handbag-scheveningen-pier-netherlands-1960s ER -
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