Zoutwinning in Grobogan 1910 - 1928

This is a page from a photo album entitled 'Zoutwinning in Grobogan' - 'Salt Extraction in Grobogan'. An anonymous hand, an anonymous date. I think about how these images were made, so far away from me and my own practice as a painter, and how the framing of these images, and of the whole page, is so considered, and I wonder, what was the act of making this page like? There is a hand-drawn frame in light blue ink that surrounds three small black and white photographic images of laborers extracting salt. A circle, a square, a rectangle. The linear quality is so striking: a thin, wavering blue line that brings a personal touch to an otherwise documentary collection of images. I try to imagine the hand that made these lines, the person who curated the images on the page. I feel like I can see a friendship between the person who took the photos and the one who made the lines, both trying to capture a particular time and place. I love how art makes time feel so elastic. The conversation between artists just keeps going and going.