Molen voor suikerfabriek Possibly 1929

This anonymous photograph captures a sugar mill. You can see the industrial machinery and the man standing beside it. What was the photographer thinking as he made the photograph? Did he consider it art? Maybe he thought of it as more of a document, the way some photographers did back then. And now, here we are, considering it in a museum. I wonder about the material aspects: the gray scale, the shiny surfaces of the metal contrasted with the worker’s clothes. It's a dance between light and shadow. Then there's the human presence, that man standing there. Is he an artist, or just a worker? What would it have been like to spend a life working with that machine? Photographs like this make me consider how creativity emerges in unexpected places. You can find it in industry, in labor, in the everyday. Artists have always exchanged ideas across time, and continue to inspire one another’s creativity. It is the way new forms of expression come into being.