Groepsportret van onbekende mannen c. 1902

This is a photo of a group of men, taken by Guillaume Ronchesne in 1902. It's set in Mons, so you're probably looking at a class photo of some kind. The thing about photographs is they can show you something very particular, but they also obscure. The men are lined up in rows, dark suits against a pale wall. But what were they thinking? What were their lives? The photograph gives you the texture of the coats, the serious set of their faces. But it doesn't tell you anything. It gives the *impression* of telling you something, of being a historical record, but really, it's just a surface. It's interesting to compare this with the paintings of someone like Gerhard Richter, where the blur creates a similar kind of ambiguity. What is a photograph, but a kind of painting? And what is a painting, but a kind of photograph? Neither one can give you the real story, but maybe together they get you closer.