Burgemeester Mr P.J. Oud ontving de Indonesische gedelegeerden in het Rotterdamse Stadhuis Possibly 1949

This photograph was taken by the Dutch Government Information Service, and it captures the moment that Burgemeester Mr P.J. Oud received Indonesian delegates in the Rotterdam City Hall. What was it like to be there in that room, in the presence of power and hope? I think of this image as a study of looking: how a group of people look, how they are looked at. What do the gazes mean, and what do they conceal? As a painter I know that looking requires a long, slow, patient relationship to what you are looking at, a continuous testing of perception. The photograph seems to me an invitation to look closer, beyond the surface, and to imagine a narrative between the lines. It reminds me of painters like Philip Guston or Marlene Dumas, whose sensitivity towards their subject is never detached from their critical capacity to ask questions, as much about the world as about the art itself. Every brushstroke, every captured moment, can be a step toward understanding, a means to question, or a testament to the complex relationship between seeing and knowing.