Onbekende jongen in een zeilboot, en Otto Blau tijdens een tenniswedstrijd 1912

These faded photographs of a boy in a sailboat, and Otto Blau at a tennis match, were made by Carolina Onnen. They have this lovely sepia tone that just feels like history, doesn’t it? I love how the images are just pasted onto this dark page, like snapshots in a family album. The textures and tones are so soft, like distant memories, and I feel drawn in, you know? My eye keeps going to the sailboat at the top. The way the sail catches the light, just a simple triangle, like a child's drawing. The tones and the texture almost obscure the images, but the shapes and the relationships just about hold together, suggesting some narrative about people at leisure. It reminds me a little of Gerhard Richter’s blurred photographs, how he plays with focus and memory. I wonder what these people were like, what happened to them, what it was like being Carolina, looking at the world through the lens, capturing the moment. There is such freedom in the way she constructs her images, like a conversation between herself and her subjects.