Portret van Klaas en Tiny Kleiterp in een tuin in Bengkajang 1924 - 1925

Klaas Kleiterp’s snapshot captures Klaas and Tiny Kleiterp in a Bengkajang garden, preserving a moment with a simple camera. The light in this image seems almost tactile, doesn't it? There’s a directness to the image, a physicality that speaks to the way it was made. The texture is smooth and matte, and you can almost smell the chemicals used to develop the image. Light flares dance across the surface, obscuring parts of the image, like memories fading with time. I’m really drawn to how the faces are rendered, with such clarity; a single, focused point of sharp resolution. Think about artists like Gerhard Richter, who embraced the blur and chance effects in his paintings sourced from photographs. In a similar way, Kleiterp's photograph is a reminder that art, in any form, is as much about what we can’t control as what we can. It’s in these imperfections and accidents that the real story often lies.