Groep Duitse militairen aan een tafel Possibly 1940 - 1946

This small black and white photograph shows German soldiers sitting at a table. You might call it unremarkable, but the absence of an author makes me think about how someone decided to capture this scene, and why. I imagine them pausing, framing the shot, considering the light. It’s easy to think of photographs as a neutral record, but every choice – what to include, what to leave out – is a kind of mark-making, not unlike a painter deciding where to put a stroke of paint. It's like a dance between the eye, the heart, and the hand, a conversation with the world. We tend to think of painting as a unique thing, but really all art-making is connected. This photograph captures a moment in time, but it also invites us to reflect on the nature of observation, the act of recording, and the way we construct meaning from the world around us. We are all, in a way, in conversation with each other.