Spelende kinderen en werklieden op het Damrak 1904

This is a photograph by James Higson of playing children and workmen on the Damrak. The brown tones, the grainy texture, feel like a memory, a feeling, rather than a hard fact. I’m looking at the rope in the bottom right of the photograph, and I’m drawn to its simple, coiled form, a literal binding element that also suggests a connection to the past, to labor, to the sea. There's something about the contrast of the hard, industrial setting with the playful presence of children that strikes me. Higson wasn’t trying to make everything super clear and sharp; he was capturing a moment, a feeling of a place, and the way the light hits the buildings. It reminds me a little of some of Gustave Caillebotte’s paintings of Paris, the way he captured the changing urban landscape and the lives of ordinary people within it. Art, in its many forms, helps us see the world a little differently, and sometimes, it’s in those blurry, imperfect moments that we find the most meaning.