Optocht van de Nationale Jeugdstorm Possibly 1938

This photograph, by the Associated Press, captures a march of the Nationale Jeugdstorm. You can see the line of children processing between buildings on a stone street, and the flags hanging above. It’s a simple photograph, a press photograph, but I can’t help but think about how the image comes into being through the hands of the photographer. The photographer, in this instance, is in the right place at the right time, and is making sure to capture it. It reminds me of the photographers I know, snapping away at openings, always present, trying to record a thing. I wonder what the photographer was thinking, what their intentions were. How much control they had over the situation, and how much they were just responding. I wonder what it might have been like to be a child in the procession. It’s all a bit of a blur, the moment and the memory. We find something that seems solid, a memento, a photograph, but that is not really it either. We all respond to and build upon each other's creative expressions across time.