Wisseling van stelling 1940 - 1941

This is an anonymous photograph entitled "Wisseling van stelling" mounted on a dark page, of which there are many more, bound together in an album. The neutral tones, almost entirely devoid of colour, are punctuated by the light paper of the images themselves, and the handwriting in the margins. The photographs are grainy, with figures only coming into focus with close looking. We might think about the kind of camera they used, the kind of paper the photographs were printed on. Look at the marks made by the pen in the album, the loops and tails of the German script. Like a drawing, these marks give us a sense of the hand that made them. While the photographs capture scenes, the handwriting conveys a more intimate sense of the album's creator, hinting at their personality and perspective. It is reminiscent of the work of Gerhard Richter, who used blurred photographs as the basis for paintings, and is part of an ongoing conversation about how images shape our understanding of history and memory. It embraces ambiguity and multiple interpretations, and there's a haunting quality to the piece, a sense of something unspoken.