Leerlingen van Schule Schloss Salem tijdens een voorleespauze c. 1929

Curator: Here we have a photograph by Löher, titled *Leerlingen van Schule Schloss Salem tijdens een voorleespauze*, which translates to “Students of Schule Schloss Salem During a Reading Break”. It's estimated to have been taken around 1929, and what we're seeing is a gelatin-silver print. Editor: There's a strange sense of order and disorder here. A room full of children lying prone on the floor. And an adult sitting almost as a melancholic figure on a couch. Curator: Indeed. Salem was a boarding school founded on progressive educational principles after World War I, and images such as these can be understood as the school advertising their modern educational techniques in photography. Editor: Progressive. So why this imagery? The reclining children almost look like… casualties? Is there some symbolic reference to war or sickness that is trying to be made? Curator: I think there's an understanding we must try to have regarding physical culture in the 1920's. To understand these boys are not necessarily ill. This new body culture and posture comes directly from newly prescribed healthy sleeping habits to aid academic performance. The symbolism lies in the physical health which equates to better future soldiers and stronger society to be ready for modern future problems. Editor: Perhaps. I am interested in this melancholic seated adult supervising these strange prostrate positions and finding within them symbols that transcend such order. And the large windows create these sharp diagonals that intersect with these bodies, forming what I'm perceiving to be rather rigid spaces of surveillance rather than expressions of relaxation. The room isn’t particularly comforting and seems somewhat sparse in its decorative elements as a physical culture to reinforce itself. Curator: And yet there is a strange tension. These horizontal lines could also mean submission. This is the new symbolism of submission to modernity. To the collective rather than the individual. Editor: An image caught in transition, then. Both revealing and obscuring intentions through pose, posture, and place. Curator: Agreed, an artifact pregnant with meaning. Editor: Precisely, a potent testament to an era caught in societal flux.