Straat met aan weerszijden gebouwen in Nederlands-Indië c. 1920 - 1930

Klaas Kleiterp made this photograph of a street in the Dutch East Indies, but the date is not available. It's a gelatin silver print. The image is soaked in tones of gray and feels almost bleached out. A single figure strolls in the distance, the tropical sunlight blurring the scene, making it hard to make out the details. I can almost feel the humid heat. You wonder what Klaas was thinking when he clicked the shutter. What drew him to this particular street? Was he simply documenting life in the Dutch East Indies, or was he searching for something more elusive? Like a painter layering brushstrokes, Klaas captured a specific moment and a sense of place. Just as artists across time are in an ongoing conversation, so too are their works, inspiring and informing one another's creative endeavors. A photo like this is a form of expression, an offering of an experience of ambiguity that allows us to interpret the captured moment in different ways.