Werner met Thea en vriendin 1942 - 1944

This is an anonymously created scrapbook page containing photographs. The arrangement of monochrome images on the black page creates a formal tension between the snapshots within, and the framing outside. This tension can be seen as a discourse between lived experience and memory, a semiotic system where the photographs are signs, each pointing to a moment frozen in time, now reorganized and re-contextualized within the structured format of the album page. The materiality of the photograph, with its tonal range from light to dark, and the slightly roughened edge to each, contrasts with the smooth, uniform black of the album page. This contrast draws attention to the act of assembling and curating memories. The geometric corner stickers further compartmentalize each photograph, imposing a rigid order. Does this strive for order reflect a need to control the past, or to find meaning within its fragments?