Gezicht op het Prater te Wenen 1930 - 1931

This is an interesting photograph by Berti Hoppe, whose very name suggests to me the hopeful optimism of a painting. It shows a view of the Prater in Vienna – an amusement park, a public space – but it is framed in such a way as to suggest that it is part of a private photo album, secured by corner tabs. I see that the page has some foxing or fading, and the writing at the top also alludes to a personal record of a trip. I imagine the artist having been there, camera in hand, in a moment of in-betweenness, recording a personal memory as well as registering a public place. It's nice to see how the photograph is both intimate and distant. The artist may have wanted to remember what it was like to be there, in that space, with the world so big around them. Like paintings, photographs are about our relationship to the world, they are both inside us and outside of us, documents of experience.