oa Het imaazje van Provo

The image of Provo: Fifty years on

In 2015 it was fifty years since the appearance of Provo, the Dutch action group that gained prominence in the mid-1960s. This review article is concerned with the way Provo appears in both public history and historiography. A documentary film and two exhibitions presented Provo as the focal point of the swinging sixties in Amsterdam. Auke Boersma published a collection of autobiographical stories in which he recalls his experiences as a former provo. In his history of Provo, Niek Pas focusses specifically on the relationship between the action group and the media. He shows how Provo became a metaphor of protest and a symbol of youth revolt in the 1960s. Erik Duivenvoorden puts Provo in the wider context of the emerging youth culture in the Netherlands in the 1950s and 1960s and examines the struggle between rebellious youth and the authorities. He stresses the impact of Provo on the growth of individual freedom during the 1960s.