Blad 39 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II (1930-1949) Possibly 1932 - 1934

This is 'Blad 39 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II (1930-1949)', made anonymously around the 1930s. It’s a spread from a school register, a kind of index of faces and names, frozen in time. The layout here is so structured, so administrative, and yet the smudgy black and white photographs have a poignant quality. Each face gazes out from its square, these young women embarking on a colonial education. Look closely, and you'll notice the handwritten annotations, spidery trails of ink that reveal fragments of their lives: marriages, destinations, and other notes. In the bottom left, there’s a portrait of a woman in a fur stole. Her gaze is direct, confident. The texture of the photograph seems almost palpable, grainy and rich with history. I find myself wondering about her story, her aspirations, and how the colonial project shaped her life. Art like this makes you realise, everything is connected, everything overlaps. It’s all process, all conversation. This piece reminds me of the work of Christian Boltanski, whose installations layer found photographs and documents to evoke memory and loss. In the end, art invites us to linger in ambiguity and to acknowledge the multiple layers of history embedded in every image.