Gezicht op een werkplaats voor het snijden en inpakken van albums in Frameries before 1906

This small, anonymous image shows a workshop for cutting and packing albums in Frameries. I wonder about the hand that held the camera, the light in the room, the choices made by the artist when printing the photo. It’s all a kind of mark making—each decision building the final result. I can imagine the artist, moving through the factory floor, trying to decide on an angle. The challenge is to capture the movement of the factory whilst keeping everything clear. There is a tension there. All those figures in the background must have looked different to how they appear in the final photograph. Photography, like painting, is really a collaborative process. There’s the person making the image, but also the subject itself, and finally the viewer. All those steps along the way are so important and that’s what makes an image sing, I think. We are, all of us, in conversation with each other, working across time, inspiring each other’s creativity.