Gezicht op de Rooms-Katholieke kerk te Berkel before 1910

This is a photograph of Gezicht op de Rooms-Katholieke kerk te Berkel, made in April 1910 by an anonymous photographer working for Monumentenzorg. There’s something so direct and unassuming about the grayscale here. No tricks, just a plain record. The photograph itself is pretty straightforward, a building captured in a matter-of-fact way, but look closer. The texture! The way the light hits the building, casting long shadows that give it depth. And those trees, kind of scraggly and bare, framing the scene. It’s like the photographer just set up their camera and snapped the picture. It reminds me a bit of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photos of industrial structures. They found beauty in the mundane, just like the photographer of this church did. Art isn’t always about bells and whistles; sometimes, it’s about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.