Blad 76 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II (1930-1949) Possibly 1936

This page from a student register, with its handwritten entries, photos, and signatures, feels like a painting in its own right. It’s from a colonial school for women in The Hague, sometime between 1930 and 1949. I imagine the registrar, carefully inking each entry, a slow build-up of names, dates, and places, like layers of paint. The columns are marked with information about the students, their places of birth, and even their marital status! Each signature a small, gestural mark, a unique expression of self. Looking at the old photographs pasted alongside the text, each one a little portal into another time. I imagine the students' hopes and dreams, captured in these formal portraits. Like a painter working in series, each page of this register adds a new brushstroke to a larger portrait of a place, a time, and the lives of these women. It makes me think of the power of art to document, to remember, and to connect us across time.