Bezoek aan het Kongressbad in Wenen 1930 - 1931

These black and white photographs by Berti Hoppe capture the Kongressbad in Vienna, and I'm immediately drawn to their simplicity. The grainy texture, the stark contrast, it all feels so immediate, like a memory half-formed. There's a softness, a kind of dreamy haze over everything. It reminds me of the way light and shadow can play tricks, blurring edges and softening forms. It’s like Hoppe wasn’t just recording a scene, but also trying to capture a feeling, maybe a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era. The way the light filters through the trees, creating these dappled patterns on the ground, there’s something almost painterly about it. The photograph is a conversation, a dialogue between the artist, the subject, and the viewer. And maybe that's what all art is, in the end, a way of making sense of the world around us, one image at a time. Similar to the work of Lisette Model, Hoppe’s work captures a world that is both familiar and strange.