Zes portretten van Herman Besselaar, Berti Hoppe en kennissen c. 1930

This is a photo album page by Berti Hoppe, and it's just calling to me. Hoppe has arranged six photographs on a dark page, each one carefully mounted with those little paper corners we used to use. You know, a photo album is a kind of personal archive, right? A way of freezing moments, constructing narratives. I can imagine Hoppe carefully selecting these images, thinking about the relationships between them, the stories they tell together. Who were Herman Besselaar and Berti Hoppe? What were they thinking when they posed for these pictures? Why were some of these moments more important than others? The grainy black and white, the stiff poses, all hint at a different time, a different way of seeing the world. Each photograph, with its unique perspective and composition, offers a glimpse into their lives, their relationships, their world. And by putting them together like this, she’s talking to us, and to all the artists that come after.