Koor van de Maartenskerk te Doorn 1890 - 1920

This photograph of the Koor van de Maartenskerk te Doorn was shot by an anonymous photographer. It’s amazing, you know? Someone walked up to the Maartenskerk, wherever that was, and saw something worth recording. The muted palette and composition gives this photo an unfinished quality. Look at the image, and you can almost hear the sounds of construction. The half-finished roof and scaffolding suggest the building is in a state of transition. I wonder what the photographer was thinking. Were they thinking about documenting change, a church in the process of repair? Maybe they felt a connection to the workers, a shared sense of labor and creation. What does it mean to construct a space for worship? The scaffolding crisscrosses the façade like aggressive strokes of a pencil. The rough, splintered beams of the roof create a jagged rhythm against the sky. And I think, maybe photography is a bit like that too. Each click of the shutter is a way of building something new, of framing and reshaping the world.