Spelen in zee in Zandvoort 1900 - 1905

Knackstedt & Näther made this photograph of people playing in the sea in Zandvoort. The monochrome palette feels like a memory; something indistinct and dreamlike. You get the feeling that the process was of paramount importance. The grainy texture adds to the photograph's melancholic quality. What is the surface? Is it paper? Or something else? Light dances on the water's surface, while the figures are frozen in time, caught in a moment of play. It’s hard to tell what tools were used to make this. Look at the bottom right of the picture, where the waves are so still they look solid; like glass. This reminds me of some of Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographs of seascapes, with the gray tones and the surface of the ocean. It asks us to accept ambiguity and multiple interpretations, while rejecting fixed meanings.