Compositie van elf foto's van personen en onderwijs aan de Keizerlijke Militair-Medische Academie, gecombineerd met decoratie van medische instrumenten en materialen 1913

This photograph by V. Sabel’skij combines eleven photos of people and medical education at the Imperial Military Medical Academy with a decorative arrangement of medical instruments. It's collage-like, but done with photographs and objects. I love how the artist uses a monochrome palette to create this sense of looking back in time. The tones of grey, white and brown evoke a feeling of nostalgia. You can almost smell the ether. The textures are fascinating too, with the glossy smoothness of the photographs contrasting with the rougher surfaces of the bandages. Look how the surgical scissors cut across the images like a formal intervention. It creates a dynamic relationship between the photos and the objects. It's as if Sabel’skij is performing surgery on the image itself, cutting and rearranging reality to create something new. This piece reminds me a little of Hannah Hoch’s photomontages, but with a medical twist. It’s a fascinating blend of documentary and artistic vision, showing how even the most factual images can be transformed into something deeply personal and evocative.