Akkerbouw te Grobogan 1910 - 1928

This anonymously created photographic collage, titled Akkerbouw te Grobogan, captures scenes of agricultural life. What strikes me is the hand-painted border around the images. These watercolour flourishes have a delicacy that contrasts with the hard reality of the scenes that they frame. I like to think that the artist was interested in the process of documenting the everyday, but wasn’t afraid to soften this with a sense of the imagination. Look closely at the wisps of red watercolour; it reminds me of the way Cy Twombly let’s lines run all over the place. In these images of fieldwork, the artist uses the border to allow the work to spill outside of the photograph. This allows for a playful touch, while framing images of labor in the fields. It’s this tension between documenting the mundane and embracing abstraction that really excites me.