De Wehrmacht trekt over de Moerdijkbrug Possibly 1940 - 1946

Here's a small black and white photograph of the Wehrmacht crossing the Moerdijk bridge by an anonymous artist. I wonder what the artist was thinking as they snapped the picture. The subject is a bit bleak with German soldiers marching along the bridge, a car to the left and a truck in the middle of the composition. The artist is simply recording a historical event. It makes me think about how art is often just the recording of something. But that something, like this event, carries so much emotional baggage. There is so much meaning condensed into a single moment. It’s as if the act of making art can memorialize and monumentalize. Like the heavy strokes in a Cy Twombly painting, where each mark memorializes a different aspect of an emotion or event, this photograph also seems weighted with the gravity of history. It reminds me that artists throughout time inspire one another, adding to an ongoing conversation.