Familie en vrienden 1941 - 1942

This photo album page, titled "Familie en vrienden", meaning "Family and Friends", made by an anonymous artist, is housed in the Rijksmuseum. I'm looking at this array of tilted black and white photographs, and I'm imagining the hands that carefully placed each one onto the gray page, adhering them just so. Was there an intention, a narrative, behind their arrangement? Or was it more of an intuitive process, a dance of shapes and memories? I wonder, too, about the lives captured in these images. Who were these people, and what stories did they hold? There's a sense of intimacy here, of shared moments frozen in time. Maybe the act of arranging these photos was a way of preserving those connections, of keeping those memories alive. It is a kind of conversation with the past, a way of making sense of life through the act of curation. As artists, we are always in conversation with one another, drawing inspiration from the past while forging our own paths forward, finding meaning in the act of creation itself.