Schip in droogdok 1940 - 1943

This black and white photograph, ‘Ship in Dry Dock,’ now at the Rijksmuseum, captures a vessel suspended in a moment of repair. I imagine the photographer, hidden behind the camera. How they would have been drawn by the stark contrasts, and the textures of wood against metal? There’s something deeply human about documenting a ship—a machine of exploration and commerce—in a state of vulnerability. Notice the detailed lines of the ship's hull and the scaffolding. The ship feels both monumental and fragile, a silent giant in the skeletal embrace of the dry dock. It reminds me of other artists drawn to the beauty of industry and labor. The Bechers, for example, with their typologies of industrial structures. There’s a kind of austere poetry here, in the everyday made monumental through careful observation and documentation.