Soldaten met dienstpersoneel c. 1949 - 1950

This is a collection of photographs, pasted into an album at an unknown date by an anonymous artist. The brown paper of the album provides the ground for a series of black and white photographs depicting soldiers and local people. What really strikes me is the texture, the rough grain of the album page, and the slick surfaces of the glossy photographs, yellowed with age. The album page has some damage, a stain in the upper right quadrant which pools like a watercolor mark. It reminds me that the surface of a painting can be subject to all kinds of unforeseen events, an open invitation for accidents to happen. It makes you wonder about all the untold stories that could be told from these images. Like the work of Gerhard Richter, they point to art as an ongoing conversation across time. Ambiguity is embraced in this collection of photographs, where the viewer is invited to use their imagination to find meaning and connection.