Paard en wagen bij een berg puin 1945 - 1947

This photograph, *Paard en wagen bij een berg puin*, was taken by Anefo. The lack of a precise date in the metadata feels right; its timelessness makes it seem like it could have been taken at any point in the past. I love how the whole scene is framed within what looks like a doorway. The details are grainy and the range of tones are limited to a narrow band of greys, which adds to the feeling that this is not just a picture of a horse and cart but the residue of a dream. Look at the horse – the way it blends into the rubble, becoming just another pile of matter in a world of exhausted materials. The composition reminds me a little bit of some of the paintings of Phillip Guston. Like Guston, Anefo isn’t afraid to embrace a certain ugliness or awkwardness. Both artists are more interested in the possibilities of representation than they are in conventional ideas of beauty. It asks us to think about what it means to represent the world, and the extent to which we are always implicated in that process.