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~ The Joy of Yayoi brings together more than 70 photographs documenting the Japanese artist’s extraordinary years in the Netherlands ~
WILLEMSTAD/AMSTERDAM — More than half a century after Curaçao-born photographer Harrie Verstappen pointed his camera at a then still relatively unknown Japanese artist named Yayoi Kusama, those photographs have been brought together in a remarkable new book.
The Joy of Yayoi, by Harrie Verstappen and Jan de Bruin, was published in the Netherlands in August 2026 by art and photography publisher Lecturis.
The hardcover book contains more than 70 photographs made by Verstappen during Kusama’s years in the Netherlands, accompanied by a short text. The 80-page volume measures 24 by 28 centimetres and retails in the Netherlands for €35.
There is also a collector’s edition limited to just 45 copies. It includes three original prints by Verstappen, signed and numbered, and is priced at €295.
The Joy of Yayoi at publisher Lecturis
For Verstappen, now living again on his native Curaçao, publication of the book brings together a story that began almost 60 years ago.
When Harrie met Yayoi
Verstappen met Yayoi Kusama in the Netherlands in 1967.
Kusama, born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, spent extended periods living and working in the Netherlands during the second half of the 1960s and became associated there with the avant-garde ZERO movement.
Her exhibitions and happenings were anything but conventional.
Kusama staged performances in galleries, private homes and public spaces, sometimes painting the bodies of naked participants with the polka dots that would eventually become one of the most instantly recognizable signatures in contemporary art.
And Harrie Verstappen was there with his camera.
The press material accompanying the new book says Verstappen photographed many of Kusama’s planned as well as spontaneous happenings and actions. Their intensive collaboration produced not only striking photographic material but also a visual record of the spirit of an extraordinary period in European art and counterculture.
The photographs are therefore about considerably more than Kusama herself.
They capture a moment in history.
The formal press release notes that Kusama lived and worked in the Netherlands for extended periods until the beginning of the 1970s, while Verstappen documented her during exhibitions, in private homes and on the streets.
Today, Yayoi Kusama is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of postwar and contemporary art. Her dots, pumpkins, mirror installations and immersive works have made her one of the world’s most recognizable living artists.
But Verstappen’s camera encountered her long before that level of fame arrived.
A Curaçao photographer in the middle of the 1960s
The story is made all the more remarkable by the man behind the photographs.
Harrie Verstappen was born in Curaçao in 1940 and lived in the Netherlands from 1954 until returning to his native island in 1978. During those years he worked for photographic companies, established VistaFilm to distribute Japanese films in the Netherlands, and developed a career spanning photography, film, television and publishing.
His photographs and articles appeared in publications including NRC Handelsblad, Algemeen Dagblad and Vrij Nederland, while his photographic subjects included some of the defining names of the music scene of the era.
The Kinks.
Golden Earring.
Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.
He also worked as a sound technician for Dutch television from 1968 to 1970 and as a still photographer on Dutch feature-film productions.
The publisher’s biography notes that Verstappen later became director of the Fotomatiko del Caribe after returning to Curaçao.
It makes The Joy of Yayoi not merely a retrospective of an internationally famous Japanese artist, but also another chapter in the remarkable photographic career of a Curaçaolean who repeatedly found himself with his camera in the right place at the right time.
Or perhaps, knowing Harrie, deliberately a little ahead of the right time.
One of the observations attributed to him on his own wonderfully unconventional online résumé seems particularly appropriate:
“There’s no future in being ahead of your times.”
— Harrie Verstappen
There may be more truth in that line than its author intended.
From Kusama to Caribbean aviation
Readers of StMaartenNews.com with an interest in Caribbean aviation may actually have encountered Verstappen’s work without realizing it.
For many years he has maintained an extensive online collection of information about airlines serving, or proposing to serve, Curaçao and the wider Dutch Caribbean.
It is an idiosyncratic archive, mixing aviation history, developments and Harrie’s unmistakably dry commentary.
The collection even contains an entry on Air St. Maarten, now AirSXM.com, describing owner Terrance Rey’s operation as a “virtual airline” and recording its expansion into Caribbean charter services.
That shared fascination with Dutch Caribbean aviation is also how Verstappen and StMaartenNews.com publisher Terrance Rey came to know each other and subsequently maintained a longstanding email correspondence between Curaçao and St. Maarten.
But photography has remained one of the defining threads running through Verstappen’s life.
And The Joy of Yayoi demonstrates just how consequential some of those photographs eventually became.
Seventy photographs, nearly sixty years later
The book’s timing is particularly fitting.
The publisher notes that Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum is scheduled to open a major retrospective of Kusama’s work on September 11, 2026, covering some 70 years of her artistic career.
Meanwhile, photographs taken by a young Curaçaolean photographer in the Netherlands nearly six decades ago have acquired an entirely new historical significance.
The Joy of Yayoi was officially published on August 14, 2026. Lecturis lists Harrie Verstappen as photographer, Jan de Bruin and Verstappen as authors, and Gijs Dragt as designer. The Dutch-language hardcover carries ISBN 9789462265806.
Copies are now available in the Netherlands and are on their way to Curaçao, although Verstappen himself says he does not yet know exactly when they will arrive on the island or at what local price.
After two years putting the book together, and almost six decades after the photographs themselves were made, Verstappen summed up the occasion rather more simply in an email to this newspaper:
“It’s out! Finally.”
Sometimes being ahead of your time merely means having to wait a little longer for history to catch up.
BOOK DETAILS
The Joy of Yayoi
Photos of Yayoi Kusama in the Netherlands
Authors: Harrie Verstappen & Jan de Bruin
Photography: Harrie Verstappen
Publisher: Lecturis
Published: August 14, 2026
Format: Hardcover, 80 pages
Dimensions: 24 × 28 cm
Language: Dutch
Images: More than 70 photographs
Retail price: €35
Collector’s edition: €295, limited to 45 numbered copies with three signed original prints
ISBN: 978 94 6226 580 6
Publisher’s page for The Joy of Yayoi
Photo caption:
Curaçao-born photographer Harrie Verstappen with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama during their collaboration in the Netherlands. Verstappen documented many of Kusama’s happenings and performances beginning in 1967. More than 70 of his photographs have now been collected in the new book The Joy of Yayoi. Photo: Harrie Verstappen archive / courtesy of Lecturis.
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