Woningen aan de Kalkhaven te Gorinchem 1911

This photograph of houses on the Kalkhaven in Gorinchem was taken in September 1911 by an anonymous photographer from Monumentenzorg. The sepia tone gives it a sense of the past, a faded memory. It’s all about texture. The rough wood of the planked wall, the more refined frames of the windows, the peeling paint on the walls: you can almost feel the grit of the scene. The way the light falls across the windows, some dark, some bright, it almost makes the windows look like abstract blocks of colour. The struts holding up the roof are like lines in a drawing, mapping out the space. You know, looking at this image, I’m reminded of Atget. The way he captured the streets of Paris, not for beauty, but for the record of things. This photographer, like Atget, invites us to really look at the world around us.