Oefenen met zendapparatuur 1940 - 1943

This photo album page, titled “Oefenen met zendapparatuur,” which translates to “Practicing with radio equipment,” contains six black and white photographs by an anonymous artist, and lives here at the Rijksmuseum. The composition of the images are a window into a world of process. The texture is flat, matte, with subtle gradations of greyscale – like a foggy memory. The repeated poses and landscapes speak to the repetitive nature of training. Look closely at the variations in each shot – a slight shift in posture, a change in equipment placement, a different angle of the sun. Each photograph captures a moment in a sequence, a step in the process of learning and refining a skill. It's like a painter doing studies, searching for the perfect line or shade. The work reminds me of Ed Ruscha’s series of books documenting ordinary subjects, celebrating the beauty and poetry in the mundane. Like Ruscha, the anonymous artist here invites us to find meaning in the act of repetition and to appreciate the subtle nuances of everyday life.