Blad 54 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II (1930-1949) Possibly 1934

This page comes from a register of students at the Colonial School for Girls and Women in the Hague, sometime between 1930 and 1949. Looking closely, I’m struck by the layering of information, the handwritten notes, and the small, grainy photographs pasted in. Each entry feels like a tiny, self-contained world. Notice the columns: names, dates, places of origin. There’s a tension here between the official, bureaucratic function of the register and the intimate, personal stories it hints at. I’m drawn to the handwritten signatures, each one a unique gesture. They vary from bold and confident to hesitant and tentative. They remind me that art is never neutral, it's always infused with human presence. You can feel the hand of the person who wrote this, the people who pasted their pictures in here. Thinking about the anonymous maker of this book, I’m reminded of the work of On Kawara, who made art from lists and dates. Both of them leave us to fill in the gaps in the story. Ultimately, this page is a starting point, an invitation to imagine the lives of these young women and their journeys into a changing world.