Toren van de Hervormde Kerk te Stolwijk 1904

This intriguing photograph captures the tower of the reformed church at Stolwijk, shrouded in scaffolding, in the Netherlands. I find myself wondering about the person behind the camera, from Monumentenzorg, with their official sounding title. It’s as if they were interested in capturing a moment of vulnerability, when the church is in a state of repair. The cool greys and browns give the church a sense of faded glory, a quiet strength. The scaffolding becomes a kind of geometric web, juxtaposed against the organic shapes of the bushes below. I see an echo of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s typologies of industrial structures – but with more humanism and less conceptual distance. It's almost as though the artist is saying, "Even the most steadfast structures need mending.” And there’s a beautiful humility in that observation, don't you think? The camera becomes like a brush, capturing the subtle shifts in light, and the emotional weight of time.