Suikerdrooginstallatie 1918

This photograph of 'Suikerdrooginstallatie' – a sugar drying installation – seems to invite a kind of process-oriented viewing, even though the artist is unknown. The monochromatic palette and the careful framing emphasize the industrial form and its textural qualities. Look at how the light catches the metallic surfaces, highlighting the rivets and seams. There is a real focus on the tangible qualities of metal here. The anonymous artist really emphasizes the machine’s stark materiality, almost like a sculptural object. The crisscrossing of the metal girders is almost like the active brushstrokes of a cubist painting, with the photograph acting like an engineering drawing, blurring boundaries between artistic expression and functional design. It makes me think of the stark beauty in some of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs of industrial structures. Both emphasize a kind of quiet reverence for industrial forms, inviting us to see beauty in the unexpected. Art really is an ongoing conversation.