Herman Bessleaar langs een weg en een stadsgezicht van Wenen nabij de Westbahnhof 1930 - 1931

This is Herman Bessleaar langs een weg en een stadsgezicht van Wenen nabij de Westbahnhof by Berti Hoppe. It's a page of photographs. Look at the way these images are presented, mounted on the page like snapshots. Hoppe isn’t trying to trick us with illusion. It’s more like she’s saying, hey, here are some things I saw. The texture and color of the page contrast with the high contrast of the photographs. The marks made by time are part of the piece. This brown, aging color is the bass note of the album. It throws the images forward, makes them more immediate. Consider the picture on the left, with the figure of a man standing by a road. The road curves away into the distance, but he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, he’s just there. Maybe that's the point. Maybe Hoppe is showing us that photography captures things as they are and not as they should be. The way Hoppe assembles these photos is like a scrapbook, it reminds me of the work of collage artists like Hannah Hoch. In the end it's all just stuff, and it's up to us to make something out of it.