Drie Wehrmachtsoldaten 1940 - 1945

This small photograph, 'Drie Wehrmachtsoldaten', shows three German soldiers, and comes to us anonymously. It's like finding a lost sketch in someone's studio, full of incidental information. I wonder, did the person who took this consider themselves an artist? I can imagine them carefully adjusting the camera, framing these figures in the landscape. The surface has marks and damage, which make me think about time and chance. Did they develop the picture themselves? What was the atmosphere like, the sounds, the smells? It has a quiet, documentary quality. Think of the artist's hand in the darkroom, developing this image. It feels a bit like Gerhard Richter's work, how he used photography as a jumping-off point. It’s also like, what does it mean to paint something like this today, so loaded and difficult? I think about how making it must have felt.