Rotterdamse haven Possibly 1940 - 1945

Here is a small photograph of Rotterdamse haven, its maker is sadly unknown. I like to imagine them standing there, the harbour cranes looming, trying to compress all that activity into this tiny rectangle. I wonder about the process of taking the picture. You have to be so fast, making decisions in a split second. The world is so alive but the photo flattens and stills it. I wonder if the person who made this was a painter? I bet they were thinking about shapes and composition in a painterly way. The silvery gelatin of the photographic print mimics the slickness of oil paint, the way it captures light. I think about the anonymous painter, how they would have walked around and looked at other paintings in museums, and how their ideas would have been transformed by the act of making. Ultimately, all artists are connected by that simple gesture.