Sectie S - piket 58 arbeiders bezig zand te graven 1905 - 1910

Augusta Curiel made this photograph of workers digging sand presumably in Suriname, where she lived and worked. Look at how the tonal range feels almost like a painting, the earth a dark, granular mass against the light sky. Photography has this fascinating quality; it’s both indexical and interpretive. It shows us something that was verifiably there – the workers, the sand – but the photographer chooses the angle, the light, and what to include or exclude. The way Curiel uses light makes the scene feel immediate and present. It reminds me of the photographs of the Farm Security Administration in the US during the Depression, where photographers like Dorothea Lange captured the lives of rural Americans with stark realism, while also making art. This image invites us to reflect on the labor and lives represented, and on the act of image-making itself.