Achtergevel van Nieuwstraat 10 te Dordrecht 1911

This gelatin silver print of Achtergevel van Nieuwstraat 10 te Dordrecht, was made in January 1911 by an anonymous photographer from Monumentenzorg. It’s that sepia tone that gets me, that feeling of something remembered, something lost, something that's both there and not there. Look at the way the light hits the brick, how it seems to flatten the building, turning it into a kind of facade. The bare tree in front, with its delicate network of branches, reminds me of the way we build up a painting, layer by layer, trying to capture something real. It’s like the photographer was trying to make a record, but also to make a kind of ghost. That makes me think of Bernd and Hilla Becher, the way they documented industrial structures with such deadpan precision. But this has something else, something more personal and melancholic, like a memory fading at the edges. It's a reminder that all art is a conversation, an exchange of ideas across time, and that ambiguity is the thing that keeps it alive.