Theefabriek Kertamanah gebouwd door Machinefabriek Braat Soerabaia 1934 1934

This black and white photograph of Theefabriek Kertamanah was taken in 1934 in Soerabaia by an anonymous artist. It's not about thick strokes or wild color, but about the stark reality of form and function. What strikes me is the flatness of the image. The building, imposing as it is, seems pressed against the picture plane, a series of stacked rectangles. There's something honest about that, a kind of unvarnished look at industrial architecture. You can almost feel the heat and the weight of labor in those concrete walls. It's like Bernd and Hilla Becher's typologies, but with a more human touch, a hint of narrative peeking through. This photograph reminds me that art isn't always about expression; sometimes, it's about witnessing, about framing a moment in time. Like, what does it mean to document a factory, a site of production, as art? Maybe it's a way of asking us to look closer, to consider the world we build and inhabit.