Untitled c. 1930s

This photograph was made by Piet Zwart, sometime in the early to mid 20th century. It looks like a photo of an old machine, but to me it’s like looking at a drawing. The stark contrasts and close cropping bring out the textures of the materials, the rough and the smooth, the oily and the dry. In the bottom right corner, there’s a mass of string or yarn that’s been caught up, a build-up of material over time that becomes almost sculptural. It’s easy to imagine Zwart seeing the inherent beauty in these arrangements and wanting to capture that on film. Looking at this photograph reminds me a bit of Karl Blossfeldt's plant studies. Both artists found abstraction in the everyday world, transforming functional objects into studies of line, form, and texture. Like all good art, this photograph invites us to see the world anew.