Gouvernementsplein, Muziek Woensdagmiddags 5 uur 1900 - 1905

Eugen Klein made this photograph of Gouvernementsplein in Paramaribo, though when exactly, remains a bit of a mystery. It's like a faded memory, all muted tones and soft focus, making the buildings seem to float in the humid air. You can feel the light, that hazy, tropical light, almost bleaching the scene. Look how the architecture is reduced to simplified forms, almost like paper cutouts against the sky. There’s a stillness to it, but also a kind of impermanence, as if the whole scene could dissolve back into the atmosphere at any moment. That little figure near the bottom, they’re so intriguing, like a ghost in the landscape. They are what gives the picture life. It reminds me a bit of some of Gerhard Richter’s blurred photographs, that similar sense of time passing and memory fading. Ultimately, it’s this hazy, ambiguous quality that gives the photograph its power. It's a fragment, a feeling, and invites us to bring our own stories to the frame.