Duitse militairen 1940 - 1945

This little black-and-white photograph, "Duitse militairen," which translates to "German Soldiers," is pasted into a scrapbook page that now lives at the Rijksmuseum. It’s by an anonymous artist, or more likely, someone's relative. I'm imagining the moment of taking this shot. You know, the light, the day, the temperature, all of it seeping into the emulsion on the film. The surface of the print is what gets me, not just the image. The three figures standing there, probably not thinking about how their likeness would be viewed nearly a century later. You can almost see the casualness, maybe boredom, etched in their faces. Thinking about those bare trees behind them, this photo feels like a memento of something, maybe a complex story, a memory, or even a warning across generations. It reminds us that we're all part of one big conversation, bouncing images and ideas off each other, trying to make sense of the world.