Isabel op haar verjaardag Possibly 1934 - 1937

Here's this old photograph, Isabel op haar verjaardag, or Isabel's Birthday, that someone made in 1934. What grabs me here is the way the image is held by the mount board – it's a support structure, sure, but the photographer writes onto it too. This handwritten quality makes me think about making art. Like, what is the process that goes into the art making? With painting, you know, there's all these layers of paint, and then the history of marks gets kind of complicated. But with photography it's often more of a 'click' moment. But that's not quite right here. Whoever made this took their time, adding these titles and dates to give the image greater meaning. It's like they're layering on another medium, taking a photograph into something else entirely, like it's part painting, part sculpture, part dream... It reminds me a little bit of Arte Povera, this idea that art can be found in ordinary things, in everyday experience, in the texture of the world.