Dagelijkse leven 1948 - 1949

This photographic spread, mounted in an album of daily life, is by an anonymous artist and presents a series of small scenes from life. I'm immediately drawn to the monochrome palette, its starkness highlighting the content: landscapes, groups of people, and vehicles. Imagine the artist carefully placing each print, composing a narrative through juxtaposition. What was their thought process? What stories do these images tell? I imagine a soldier during wartime, but who knows! Maybe they were thinking about the banality of war and the beauty of nature. Maybe this was a way to remember their time. The texture of the album itself adds another layer—the rough, brown paper a backdrop to these moments in time. It reminds me of a Gerhard Richter painting, how he layers images to reveal different planes of existence. This work, though simpler, shares that same impulse to capture and curate life's fragments. It speaks to the universal desire to document and remember, to make sense of the world through images, just like other painters throughout time.