Luftwaffe militair 1941 - 1942

This small black and white photograph titled ‘Luftwaffe militair’ now resides in the Rijksmuseum. It's anonymous, which is actually interesting, because it gives us a chance to project our feelings onto it. I feel like I'm looking at someone's personal archive; it’s a medium that is fragile and temporal. What I am drawn to most is the mundanity of the image: a building, a street, a figure. It feels very ordinary, but the setting and subject give it a disturbing tone, particularly when the title is considered. The framing and photographic tone evokes the work of Gerhard Richter. Richter collected personal and found photographs to use as source material for his paintings, embracing the slippages and imperfections of the photographic image. In a similar way this photograph encapsulates an idea of history as something that can be known only through imperfect images and fragmented stories. The act of looking at this photograph is an active process of remembering, imagining, and feeling.