Twee malariapatiënten 1929

This black and white photograph of two boys suffering from malaria was probably made using a large format camera, sometime in the 1920s. The photographer, from the Hospitaal Batak Instituut, isn’t trying to make a formal portrait, but rather a clinical record. In this straightforward approach, the image reveals both the individuality of the subjects and the universalising gaze of medical science. The tonality is very subtle, you can see every rib on the young man to the left, but the background is soft and undefined. There is something very moving about the physical presence of the image, the traces of how it has been handled and stored, the yellowing of the paper around the edges. I find myself thinking of August Sander, and the way he catalogued the German population in the interwar years. Both projects seek to record the human condition, though through different means. I think art is powerful when it asks us to consider different perspectives and to find our own meaning in the process.