Wehrmachtsoldaten met Nederlanders 1941 - 1942

Editor: This gelatin silver print, simply titled "Wehrmachtsoldaten met Nederlanders," dates from around 1941-1942. What strikes me is how…posed, and yet somehow unsettling it is. There's a mix of smiles and serious faces. How do you interpret this seemingly staged photograph, knowing the historical context? Curator: Ah, it's a ghost in the machine, isn’t it? I imagine this was not taken by any artist but out of coercion by someone in command of the occupying forces. So many smiling faces pressed into an artificial moment – the Netherlands in that terrible suspended time. The staged happiness almost screams of unspoken tension, don't you think? Like a play put on for the cameras. Editor: Yes, it does! It feels like a very artificial and almost desperate…attempt at normality. What about the composition? Is there something to glean from how everyone is arranged? Curator: It's crammed, isn't it? Almost bursting at the seams. The arrangement says a lot: the soldiers and the civilians all packed in, blurring any clear separation. They appear equal but we can surmise who holds the power in that photograph. Editor: That forced coming together, like everyone is instructed to make do with this situation, for the sake of the picture... It is more telling than the image makers intended, that's for sure! Curator: Exactly. Look closely at those smiles, search for glimmers of authentic emotion – are those expressions of peace and hope or terror in disguise? This one photo tells a novel about all this occupation cost this nation. Art imitates strife in its attempt at reconciliation, as though reconciliation between citizens and military were ever to happen at the price of subjugation. Editor: The photograph has an immediacy and an unnerving effect. Thinking about it not as a piece of art, but as an exercise in social manipulation... it changes everything, makes the photograph more of a relic or artefact, even! Curator: Precisely, which is also precisely where art resides. So much to read in a silent, grey photograph.