Gezicht op het Forum Romanum, het Colosseum en twee straatgezichten nabij Rome 1936 - 1939

This photographic collage by Berti Hoppe gathers together four views of Rome, like souvenirs in a scrapbook. There’s the Forum, the Colosseum, street scenes, and even palm trees. I can imagine Hoppe carefully choosing each shot, each angle, trying to capture something essential about the city. They have a quiet and almost melancholy beauty. What might it have been like to be Hoppe wandering the wet Roman streets with a camera? Did they feel the weight of history pressing down on them or the liberation of being lost in a foreign land? There's a stillness to each frame, a sense of contemplation. And it makes me think of the way we all, as artists, collect and arrange moments and memories, trying to make sense of the world through our own particular lens. This work reminds me that the act of seeing is itself an act of creation.