Soldaten in de ruïnes van het Alcázar 1936

This photograph, Soldaten in de ruïnes van het Alcázar, was captured by Presse-Photo GMBH. The sepia tones feel so weighted with history. You see soldiers navigating what’s left of a building, and it hits you – the artist, or photographer in this case, is showing us a world turned upside down. I bet they felt a responsibility to capture it all, to communicate something important. The texture, the brokenness, it’s all so palpable, you can almost feel the dust. Look at the way the light catches on the rubble! It creates a sense of depth, of endlessness. And it’s like the eye is invited into this space, full of melancholy and shock. I’m thinking about Goya, about war, about how, as artists, we try to make sense of chaos and suffering. It’s this long, ongoing conversation, isn’t it? A conversation between artists, across time. Each image, each work, adding to the story, but never quite resolving it.