Installatie 1931 - 1937

This photograph titled Installatie was made at an unknown date by an anonymous artist, and is located in the Rijksmuseum. The photographic greyscale creates a sense of industrial process, the image itself caught in the act of creating. Looking at the surface texture, there's a definite flatness, a documentarian neutrality that flattens the image out. There's also a real sense of depth, particularly in the receding plane of the machine. The arrangement of grilles down the right hand side of the plane create a sense of the uncanny, an almost musical rhythm. I love the way the eye is drawn into the centre, where the grilles are, then flicked around to the clock on the left, creating a visual dialogue. Thinking about the dialogue between form and function, I'm reminded of the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, another pair of photographers who looked at industrial structures as a means of aestheticising the everyday. But whereas their work is formal and typological, this is far more poetic, and ambiguous. Is this just a machine? Or is it something more? Ultimately, it asks us to consider what we see, and how we see it.