Dimensions: height 168 mm, width 233 mm, thickness 15 mm
Copyright: Rijks Museum: Open Domain
This photo album was made by the Wachenheimer family between 1920 and 1932, and what strikes me is the blue, its depth and texture, like a sea or sky held in your hands. The cover has this tight, woven texture, a kind of pressed cloth that reminds me of bookbinding. You can see the marks of time: the way the corners are worn, little scratches on the surface, all those details tell a story. It’s a history of touch, of being held and opened, looked at again and again. I can almost feel the hands that turned its pages. It makes me think about the German artist Gerhard Richter, who used family photo albums as a source for his paintings, transforming personal memories into something universal. Like Richter, this album has a certain ambiguity, it invites us to fill in the gaps, to imagine the lives and stories behind the images. It’s a reminder that art, like memory, is always a process of interpretation.
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