Kriegsmarine in De Haan 1942

This scrapbook page, Kriegsmarine in De Haan, is from an anonymous artist and features a series of black and white photographs arranged within a larger album. The act of collecting and pasting is itself a kind of making – the artist has carefully curated these images and texts. I imagine them sifting through piles of photographs, maybe spread out on a table or floor, trying out different arrangements, seeing what resonates. It's all in grayscale, the paper of the album is a dark shade of gray, with a leathery brown spine. There is a photograph of what looks like a grand hotel or luxury building near the coastline. Then there are portraits of what appear to be naval officers. I wonder what the artist was thinking when they put it all together. Was it an act of remembrance, a historical record, or something more personal? This piece reminds us that artists are always conversing across time, using each other's ideas and making something new. Painting, like this scrapbook, can be an open door to many ways of seeing and feeling the world.