Duitse Luftwaffe militairen buiten aan tafel Possibly 1940 - 1945

Curator: This gelatin silver print from the Rijksmuseum's collection presents a gathering of German Luftwaffe military personnel, outdoors, seemingly relaxed at a table. It’s tentatively dated to sometime between 1940 and 1945. Editor: It has an uncanny ordinariness. Seeing them grouped like this, at ease, on what looks like a summer afternoon... it's chilling precisely because it clashes so violently with what we know about that era. Curator: The banality of evil, maybe? I keep thinking about that phrase when I see this kind of image. This image is tagged as an archive photograph in the style of group portrait, but I’m interested in how that relates to the visual codes it's deploying. The light, the table setting. It almost feels staged. Editor: Definitely staged. There’s a consciousness of being recorded, a performative aspect, that shapes the composition. I see in the background a beautiful countryside house—brick walls covered with ivy. I feel there’s almost an appeal here, and perhaps the photo was meant to instill something of what they were trying to build in their image. The immaculate table, and even the faces that aren’t smiling. There's a deliberate…severity. Curator: It almost reads like a twisted version of a family gathering, which plays into the unsettling familiarity. The setting, a sunny garden, a house consumed with the wild ivy—it all suggests continuity, belonging. Editor: I wonder, though, about the individuals. There’s one woman amongst them. The power dynamics in play are almost suffocating—like they carry a heavy weight of some sort of symbolism. How each of these individuals negotiated the space they were claiming, or not claiming... it almost brings on a kind of melancholia. They appear trapped. Curator: Trapped in a history they helped create. Photography captures a moment but becomes a historical document and symbol over time. What a chilling effect it can produce on us. Editor: Indeed. What's left isn’t only an image but the haunting echo of choices made, caught in time.