The Algemeen Hollands Fotopersbureau (General Dutch Photo Press Agency) was founded in 1945 by Ben van Meerendonk, who became owner and contributing director. The company started out with a sizable staff, but became a one-man business from the 1950s onwards, run by Van Meerendonk with his students and assistants.

Thanks to personal contacts, the company sold many pictures to communist party newspaper De Waarheid ('The Truth'). Later on Van Meerendonk made reports and news pictures for nearly all major daily newspapers, with De Telegraaf his biggest customer in the 1950s. He also produced commercial work for local businesses (barber and butcher shops) as well as for large companies like Coca-Cola and Philips.

Van Meerendonk photographed much of the recovery, the rebuilding and the increasing prosperity in the quarter century after the war. Various aspects were dealt with in his work: glamour, sports, Dutch celebrities, working conditions and the great flood, the royal family and daily life. The context in which he placed the stars - like famous Dutch singer Willy Alberti doing the dishes - provides an inadvertent image of the post-war changes in Dutch society.

Van Meerendonk wasn't afraid of staging pictures or of clarifying them with text captions. By placing a text about the proposed national budget by a picture of a candy shop, the relationship with government policy was immediately clarified.

The AHF lost De Telegraaf as its most important customer in 1963. The company went bankrupt in 1969.