Optocht NSB 1940 - 1943

This photograph, *Optocht NSB*, was made by the NSB at an unknown date. The tones are muted, almost leached of colour, and this feels very intentional. The greyscale palette emphasizes the grimness of the subject matter. I mean, look at the crowd scene captured here: the marching band with their ominous drums, the dull, lifeless faces of those watching. There’s a harshness to the contrast, where the light catches certain figures, creating sharp angles, highlighting the rigid uniformity of the marching figures against the softer, blurry forms of the crowd. It reminds me of some of those early black and white photographs by Walker Evans, but without the same sense of humanity. It’s like the artist wants you to see the order, but also the emptiness. This makes me think about the work of someone like Gerhard Richter, who uses blur and distortion to question the reliability of photographic images. Ultimately, it’s the tension between clarity and ambiguity that gives this piece its unsettling power.