Echtpaar Berti Hoppe en Herman Besselaar op vakantie 1936 - 1939

This is an intriguing page from a photo album by Berti Hoppe titled Echtpaar Berti Hoppe en Herman Besselaar op vakantie, a record of a vacation. What I see here isn’t just a collection of snapshots, but an experiment in perspective and memory. Hoppe seems to be playing with the idea of how we capture moments, stacking aerial views of the city with street-level scenes. You've got these grainy textures, these faded blacks and whites, they evoke a sense of distance and time, like sifting through someone else's memories. I wonder what Hoppe was thinking when they arranged these photos? Were they trying to create a narrative, or just preserve a feeling? The contrast between the distant, almost detached, aerial shots and the more immediate street scenes feels like a metaphor for the experience of travel itself—the way we move between being observers and participants, floating above and diving in. It’s a delicate dance between seeing and experiencing. There is no right or wrong way to look; instead, we bring ourselves, our own histories, to meet the art in the middle.