Vrienden van Loentje Onnen, waaronder Frans Paut en Alphie van Eeghen Possibly 1912 - 1914

This album page of silver gelatin prints, by Carolina Onnen, shows a series of snapshots of her friends. What strikes me is the way these images are placed on the page, like a collage, each telling a different story, yet bound together by the album's dark ground. There’s a casualness to the composition. The sepia tones give a sense of age and nostalgia, like looking back through time. You can see the texture of the paper and the slight fading, which makes the images feel fragile, like memories themselves. Take the photo of friends in a car - you can see them enjoying a day out together. The composition, with the trees acting as vertical marks surrounding them, gives it a real feeling of immediacy. Onnen’s album reminds me of the work of artists like Gerhard Richter, who also uses photography to explore memory and history. Art is always in conversation with other art – and with life. There's no one right way to see it.