Skeletbouw 1931 - 1937

These black and white photographs of a 'Skeletbouw' or skeleton construction are pasted into a book at the Rijksmuseum. I imagine the photographer, probably an amateur, methodically capturing the scene from different angles. What were they thinking as they framed each shot? There’s a simple beauty in these skeletal structures, like the ghost of a building yet to come. The textures are subtle – the grainy film, the rough edges of the prints, the matte paper of the album. I bet they felt a bit like a painter, building up the image layer by layer, each photograph a study in form and light. Think of Bernd and Hilla Becher documenting industrial architecture with their typologies, finding a quiet poetry in the mundane. Photography, like painting, is about seeing and constructing a world, one image at a time. It's all one big conversation across time.