Klassenfoto met links voor Carel Willink c. 1910 - 1920

Curator: Looking at this gelatin-silver print, a class photograph dating from around 1910 to 1920, immediately speaks of formality and...almost constraint. Editor: It has this beautiful sepia tone and seems like it could crumble at any moment. There's a story etched into the edges of the paper. So brittle, almost haunted, but I do feel a tenderness about its wear and fragility. Curator: Yes, the degradation itself is a testament to its life as an object and carrier of memory. Let’s consider that the image, group portraits, captures a particular social structure and pedagogical method in the Netherlands, focusing on collective identity construction. It represents an interesting look into that period in history. The fact that Carel Willink is allegedly featured left front, in the class of around twenty people, may contribute as a form of validation for historical narratives around these production methods. Editor: Absolutely. You have an urge to reach into the past. The slight blurriness just adds to the mystery. Makes you want to reimagine what it felt like, what they felt, that precise instant. I imagine, now it is almost fading as though the time and its world may soon never existed. A whisper from then...now almost forgotten. Curator: Right, the photograph also invites us to consider the very material conditions that produced it: the accessibility of photographic technology, its influence on documenting education in a growing industrial society. Photography like this played a part in shaping our perceptions of progress in culture. Editor: Agreed, it feels weighted. And the subjects look kind of weighed down too, they carry something—history. The teacher is staring ahead so firmly. The very edges and tonality reminds one of forgotten souls caught in time. I'd like to be one of them—one can become obsessed with those eyes looking back. Curator: That collective gaze is directed out, projecting aspiration. So much social infrastructure to analyze in the clothing styles, the way people positioned, so much labor materialized around this object. Editor: I love to just daydream who these people became, how their lives unfurled beyond the borders of the photo and this period piece of our past that tells this collective truth, each having their moment under the same gaze.