Boulogne III c. 1900 - 1910

This black and white photograph, Boulogne III, was taken by Henricus Jacobus Tollens. Look at this stark image of some kind of dredging machinery in the water and the pier alongside it. The way it is constructed makes me think of building sites, scaffolding, half-built things, and stuff that's kind of precarious. What could Tollens have been thinking? He clearly thought that this industrial scene was worth recording, and he knew how to make it look monumental, the dredging machinery looking strangely permanent. That sky is everything, all white and empty, as if we are looking into the future. Think of the painter Giorgio de Chirico and his metaphysical landscapes, and the great Bernd and Hilla Becher, who photographed industrial structures. It's all one big conversation, everybody borrowing and stealing from each other, all the time, and through time.