Zeilschepen en (vermoedelijk) een marineschip voor de kust van Nederlands-Indië c. 1920 - 1930

This photograph was taken by Klaas Kleiterp in the Dutch East Indies, and shows sailing ships and, it seems, a navy ship off the coast. What I see is the sea. As a painter, you know, I'm constantly thinking about how to capture the ocean, the surface, the light. And here, Kleiterp has frozen a moment with a single wave. I imagine him, trying to find the right angle, the right light. What’s he trying to tell us about the sea? It’s heavy, full of boats, full of stuff, but he can't ever quite grasp it, can he? The wave in the foreground is a beautiful horizontal mark, a sort of tonal band that bisects the picture. Painters, photographers, we're all just trying to wrestle with the same thing: how to turn something three-dimensional and alive into something still, but still alive.