Bed 1935

Curator: Here we have a fascinating photograph entitled "Bed" dating back to 1935, now residing here at the Rijksmuseum. It's presented as a gelatin-silver print, a choice that enhances its striking contrasts. Editor: The image feels so staged. Like a stage set waiting for the players, who never arrive! I immediately get a sense of melancholy and absence. Curator: Absence is an interesting entry point. What strikes me is the interplay between cultural artifacts. We see what appears to be a repurposed, intricately carved Asian panel placed as a headboard behind a bed or perhaps integrated into a larger decorative element. Editor: The ornamentation screams opulence, but it's also rigid. And in black and white, the carving details are so lost in themselves. I would say it loses itself; it yearns for the story they originally carried, but they seem to be whispering rather than shouting here, which does reinforce that mood of melancholy again, I suppose. Curator: Perhaps the photographer Elsa Silberstein wants to draw attention to this tension between the original context and a new Western placement. We cannot say this definitively, but as it is called ‘Bed’, the viewer gets to see beyond just its original utility and recontextualise the placement and relation of furniture or items in general. The composition directs our eyes through different forms and depths, yet there is also some disquiet as we are never truly shown anything truly in its state of comfort or completeness. Editor: So the whole thing feels a bit destabilized, like a memory viewed from a difficult angle. It all comes off a bit hollow for my tastes if that is the photographer's intent. Curator: Well, regardless of her intentions, this image makes me think about how objects carry stories. Not just what they were, but what they become when we give them new life, even in such a quiet photographic tableau. Editor: Yes, that resonates—it prompts a deeper conversation about how we inherit and re-interpret history through design and arrangement.