Suez II c. 1900 - 1910

This photograph, Suez II, was produced by Henricus Jacobus Tollens and it is a hazy yet precise monochromatic image of a dredging barge. What can we say about this photograph? It has an industrial precision but also a softness from being in black and white. It’s easy to imagine the artist, with the camera as a kind of prosthetic eye, composing this scene so carefully. The barge is right there, but it's also disappearing into a grey nowhere. I feel like Tollens wanted to show the barge both as it existed and as it could disappear if we weren't paying attention, and perhaps that relates to his wider practice and the work of other painters. Perhaps for Tollens photography became a way of seeing and thinking about the industrial world. And maybe through the lens of his camera, we too can find new ways of seeing, thinking, and experiencing the industrialization of our shared world.