Loentje Onnen met vrienden tijdens een autotocht naar de Grebbelinie bij Wageningen Possibly 1912 - 1915

This is a page from Carolina Onnen's photo album, a series of snapshots documenting a car trip with friends to the Grebbelinie near Wageningen. Onnen captures these moments using the distinct visual language of photography, with its grayscale palette, depth of field, and reliance on light and shadow. Look at the top left image. See how the car is not just an object, but a character? The light catches the chrome, giving it a kind of hopeful gleam. It's not so different from how a painter might use a brushstroke to animate a subject. The texture here is all about the surface of the photograph itself - that slightly glossy sheen, the way the paper curls at the edges. These elements, physical and tactile, bring us closer to Onnen's experience. In some ways photography is like painting, the photographer finds a kind of truth in the making, and the work is not a depiction of the world but a record of an event. This work reminds me a bit of the pictures taken by the painter Bonnard, both artists seem to find ways to capture the world around them with a sense of intimacy, as if they were sketching in the moment. It's a reminder that art is an ongoing conversation across time, a way of seeing and interpreting that refuses fixed meanings.