Bremen, Ritter am Rathaus I 1904

This photo captures the Rathaus in Bremen, with a knight statue standing guard, and was likely made with a simple camera. It's got that hazy, soft focus thing happening. I always wonder, what's the real subject here? Is it the architecture? The knight? Or those kids hanging out on the steps? The beauty of old photos is their texture. It’s all about the grain, the way the light hits the surface, those fuzzy details. Look at the statue's sword, so straight and solid, but kind of blurry at the edges, like a dream. It’s this contrast, this visual push and pull, that gives the photo its charm. That dark doorway behind the kids really pulls you in. This image kind of reminds me of Eugène Atget, who photographed Paris around the same time. Like Atget, Koch seems interested in documenting the everyday, but there’s also a sense of mystery, a feeling that something else is going on beneath the surface. Art is so much about ambiguity.