Ruïne van de Laurenskerk te Rotterdam c. 1940 - 1945

This photograph by J. Nolte captures the ruined Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, its date unknown. What strikes me is the texture, or lack thereof; the image's muted grays create a flattened sense of space. It's all ash and dust, a world without highlights, where even the sky seems to be part of the ruin. But look closer, and you'll find areas of intense detail, where Nolte's sharp focus brings a strange beauty to the devastation. Take the rubble in the foreground, for example; the play of light and shadow transforms it into a landscape of abstract forms. I'm reminded of Gerhard Richter's blurred photographs of post-war Germany, where the act of destruction is both recorded and obscured, as if the past is too painful to see clearly. It's a conversation across time, where each artist grapples with the unanswerable question of how to represent the unrepresentable.