Willem van den Berg met een vrouw en een jongen bij een rivier in Makuleke, Zuid-Afrika 1968

Here we have a snapshot by Willem Jacob van den Berg, most likely taken in November 1968, showing a family near a river in Makuleke, South Africa. It’s glued into a photo album with handwriting visible beside it, and this feels important - it is a deeply personal object. What strikes me most is the almost impressionistic use of colour. It's like the greens and browns are having a conversation with the light, creating an atmosphere that feels both lush and serene. It’s not about perfection, but about capturing the essence of a moment, a feeling. The process of photography isn’t obscured exactly, but the artist's hand in selecting, cropping and arranging the photos in the album gives a sense of their individual perspective. Think of someone like Gerhard Richter, who uses photography as a base but then blurs and obscures the image through paint. Van den Berg isn’t doing this literally, but there is a similar sense of trying to find the poetics in the everyday. Art, in the end, is just about seeing, feeling, and sharing that vision with others, and Van den Berg has done just that.