Detail van een electrische kabel op onbekende locatie in de Verenigde Staten 1936

Wouter Cool made this photograph of an electrical cable somewhere in the United States, and there’s a frankness to its straightforward, documentary style. Cool is dealing with the everyday, the unglamorous, the nuts and bolts, quite literally, of modern life. The beauty of this piece lies in the way Cool captures the texture and physicality of the cable. It's almost sculptural, you know? The image is black and white, but I can practically feel the rough rubber and the slick copper. The detail at the end of the cable is so rich and fascinating. It gives the sense of the heft and danger implicit in the cable. There is something of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s industrial landscapes here. Like them, Cool finds a strange beauty in the functional objects that define our world. And like their work, this piece reminds us to look again, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.