Amsterdam, Reguliersbreestraat Possibly 1900 - 1921

Here we have a commercially produced postcard, a fleeting impression of Amsterdam’s Reguliersbreestraat rendered in shades of blue, around 1900. It feels like a memory trying to surface, the limited palette giving the scene a dreamlike quality, a world slightly removed. This kind of colour choice can really flatten an image, but also focuses the eye, so you are forced to really look. The entire composition is built from tiny hatching marks, like a memory being encoded one fragment at a time. Look closely at the building on the left, each brick is defined by a little cluster of lines. Together they make the image, but on their own, what do they do? You can see the people as barely more than smudges, ghostlike in the hazy indigo air. This reminds me of the early etchings of someone like Piranesi, who used line in a similar way to capture the essence of a place. These images are less about accuracy and more about feeling. After all, what is a city but the sum of countless tiny marks, each one shaping our experience, blurring reality and imagination?