Betaaldag in een dorp in Grobogan 1910 - 1928

This is a spread from a photo album with two black and white photographs mounted on its surface, seemingly recording ‘payday in a village in Grobogan’. The album page is toned a warm cream colour and a thin line, in blue, is used to create a kind of frame around each of the mounted photographs. I like the casual gesture of these blue lines and the way they are slightly wonky, not quite perfect in their registration. This evokes for me an understanding of artmaking as a process of accumulation and layering; a kind of bringing together of disparate elements through chance encounters, rather than aiming for a fixed outcome. In the way the album pages are used as a surface, and the photographs are carefully arranged in relation to the written captions, this piece reminds me of the work of John Baldessari, who also used photography, writing and the surface of the canvas in combination to create meaning through juxtaposition and association. Ultimately, art is a conversation across time. What do you think these images are saying to each other?