Antenne 1940

This is an old photo album page, called Antenne, with three black and white photographs mounted on dark paper, by an anonymous artist. You know, the way the photos are arranged feels like a painter figuring out a composition, a layout – balancing the shapes and the space between them. The grainy texture and the stark contrast create this feeling of distance, like looking through a hazy memory. I'm drawn to the bottom photograph; it’s slightly off-kilter and the antenna against the sky almost makes the image feel abstract. The lines of the antenna create a tension against the natural forms of the trees. It reminds me of Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographs of industrial structures, though this is more intimate, more like a personal record. It captures that impulse to document, to make sense of our surroundings. Art, at its core, is always a form of communication, an attempt to send and receive signals across time and space.