Afdeling voorraadbeheer wapens, kleding en voedsel 1942 - 1943

This arrangement of photographs titled ‘Afdeling voorraadbeheer wapens, kleding en voedsel’ (Department of Stock Management Weapons, Clothing and Food), assembled by an anonymous artist, captures the banality of military administration. I see a collage-like assembly, a bit like Kurt Schwitters, except not as abstract, of course. It's like they're saying, "Here's the stuff, here's how we keep it." I think that's really interesting. It’s like a documentary impulse meets a conceptual gesture. What was the maker of this page thinking when putting these images together? Were they trying to make sense of the sheer volume of things, or were they perhaps pointing to the absurdity of it all? In the same way artists like Gerhard Richter or Martha Rosler use found imagery to ask awkward questions about history and culture. By combining the mundane with the serious, they make us think about what’s missing, what’s outside the frame, and how our own lives are connected to these bigger stories.