Blad 116 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II (1930-1949) Possibly 1939

This page comes from a record book of students at the Colonial School for Girls and Women in The Hague in the 1930s and 40s. Look at the ink bleeding into the fibers of the page, the cramped handwriting, and the carefully glued photographs! I imagine a clerk, hunched over this ledger, carefully documenting the lives of these women. What were their stories? The dates offer a glimpse into their lives: births, marriages, departures. Each entry is like a little painting in itself, a portrait of a life in progress. The rigid columns contrast with the personal photos. Those portraits, full of dreams and hopes, are now frozen in time. They remind me of the early portraits of Alice Neel, which captured the sitter's unique character. The artist is in conversation with the bureaucrat! The page becomes a meditation on memory, history, and the human need to record and make sense of our fleeting existence.