Echtpaar Berti Hoppe en Herman Besselaar op vakantie 1936 - 1939

Berti Hoppe made this arrangement of photographs, ‘Echtpaar Berti Hoppe en Herman Besselaar op vakantie’, or ‘Married Couple Berti Hoppe and Herman Besselaar on Vacation,’ by pasting monochromatic snapshots into an album. There’s a real sense of process in how the images are organised. It’s like looking through a collection of memories or a scrapbook of experiences. You can see the difference in the way these photographs are taken, there are shots from a plane, and street level shots. I'm struck by how the material aspects, the graininess and contrasts of the black and white, contribute to a feeling of nostalgia or distant history. It invites you to reflect on the materiality of memory, how textures and tones can evoke feelings and associations. The top row, with the plane shots, the shapes are more abstracted, you get a sense of the layout of the town in a deconstructed way. Think about how these snapshots, arranged in this order, create a dialogue across time and space. There is an ongoing exchange of ideas here. It embraces the ambiguity of travel.