Vaartocht 1938 - 1939

This is Vaartocht, a collection of photos on a page in an album. What strikes me first is the way the photos are arranged, kind of like a constellation of memories. Each picture is its own little world, but together they create a larger narrative. The monochromatic tones give a sense of distance, like peering into the past. Look at the edges of the photos, how they're slightly frayed. It makes me think of the way memories themselves can become worn and softened over time. The handwritten notes beneath some of the images, “De Moena” and “Baai van Booton,” feel so personal and intimate, like whispers from another time. There’s an immediacy in these small captions that contrasts with the grand panorama in the image, and this tension gives the piece a lot of power. This work reminds me a little of Gerhard Richter’s photo paintings, the way he blurs and obscures images to explore the unreliability of memory. It's about how we piece together fragments of the past to make sense of the present.