Berti Hoppe en haar moeder in Plaswijck en in Diergaarde Blijdorp te Rotterdam 1933

This is a page from a photo album, showing Berti Hoppe and her mother in Plaswijck and Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam, taken by Herman Besselaar. Look at the way these images are arranged, like a little grid of moments. Each photograph is a small, contained world, but together they build a story. I think about the simple act of photography back then, a conscious recording of a moment, like a deliberate brushstroke. And that’s what gets me thinking. These aren't casual snapshots; they are carefully chosen images. There's a deliberate quality to each frame. It’s like each picture is a little mark on a bigger canvas, a canvas of memory and time. The whole composition reminds me of the work of Gerhard Richter, the way he uses photographic images in a sequence to invoke memory. What Besselaar is doing here is art-making, recording and preserving, yes, but also something more elusive. It’s a reminder that art is always in conversation with the past and is never truly finished.