Fotoalbum van een boottocht door Noord- en Zuid-Holland 1908

This is a photo album made by Hendrik Herman van den Berg around 1908. It is dark, almost black, and matte, like tar. It feels weighty and solid despite being quite small, like you could hold it in your hands. I imagine Van den Berg holding this album, carefully fixing images of his boat trip into place. He was probably thinking about how to preserve those fleeting moments on the water, the light on the canals, the feel of the boat moving through the water. That bold '1908' scrawled on the cover, it’s so sure of itself! Like Van den Berg wanted to freeze that particular time, memorializing his travels for future eyes. It's a personal time capsule. Painters often look at photographs, translating reality into pigment. This album is the reverse, fixing reality for the artist’s reflections, and a jumping-off point for memory and storytelling. It reminds us that artists are always in conversation, borrowing and building on each other’s work across mediums and time.