Ruïnes rond de hoek van de Coolsingel met de Kruiskade te Rotterdam c. 1940 - 1945

J. Nolte made this photograph, Ruïnes rond de hoek van de Coolsingel met de Kruiskade te Rotterdam, sometime around the middle of the 20th century. It's a study in black and white, with many shades of grey. Think about the process of photography itself. It's not about filling in lines like a colouring book, but about capturing light and shadow. The thing that hits you is the rubble, this mountainous pile of debris right in the centre. See how Nolte has arranged the image to give depth, from the solid road to the distant sky? The figures almost seem to be swallowed up by the scale of the destruction. Look at the solitary figure to the left: they're the same tone as the buildings. It's as though they're already becoming part of the landscape of loss. This picture puts me in mind of Gerhard Richter’s images of bombed cities. They’re totally different, of course, but they both say something about the way we absorb trauma. There’s always a lot more going on in these ‘simple’ pictures than you think.